In Search of a Vision
by ArmarielRoZita
Summary: Ahmed ibn Fahdlan, after dreaming of a young woman who watches his story, uses magic to transport himself into her century, but by mistake they are both projected into the year 1849...
1. Ahmed's Dream

**In Search of a Vision**

by ArmarielRoZita

co-written with Delorita

~Chapter 1~

Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan walked through the busy marketplace, concealing his face with his headdress so as not to be immediately recognized. He appeared not to hear the merchants calling out to him to buy their wares, although from time to time he gave a coin to nearly naked beggar children who tugged at his thobe. But for the most part he gazed straight ahead of him; it was clear that he knew exactly where he was going and what he was seeking.

He paused as he reached a small open tent at the far end of the market square, where a little old man in a turban and loosely fitting tunic stood arranging some bottles and jars on a display box. He turned and smiled as the tall (for an Arab), handsome, princely man greeted him with his usual gentle dignity. The old man had heard many tales of Ahmed's adventures in strange lands but had never seen him up so close.

"Good morning, Hakim," Ahmed said, smiling in return but only half noting the strong and spicy fragrance which hung in the air. "Are you in good health?"

"As good as it can be for an old man, I suppose," replied Hakim, offering a dish of chocolates. Ahmed took only one, filled with bits of dates and figs. "I am indeed honored to meet the distinguished traveler I have heard so much about."

"I seek your wisdom," Ahmed said. "I have heard much about you also, and I know how skilled you are in the magical arts. I thought perhaps you could help me."

"Please tell me how I can be of assistance," said the old man in a tone that was respectful without any of the annoying obsequiousness Ahmed had encountered in other magicians-which was why it was Hakim he had sought out. The old man motioned for him to come behind the table and sit on a cushioned stool beside a little table. Ahmed sat with his back to the public and proceeded to tell the magician about a dream he had dreamed for many nights.

"A woman sits in a room and stares into some kind of magic box," the younger man said. "I can see it is me she watches so intently, the story of my Viking adventure with the dreaded Wendol. Sometimes she even picks up a stick or wand and points it at the box so that she can watch certain scenes over and over. It is a very vivid dream, unlike most. Who can she be, and why is she so fascinated by my story?"

"How does she appear?" asked Hakim.

"Hmmmm...to me her appearance is pleasing. She is, ah, well cushioned compared with Viking women, or most of the women here. Sometimes her eyes, which are the color of soft green moss in the Northland forests, become misty as she watches, her lips part, and she sighs and murmurs things to the cat sitting in her lap. Strange things, like, 'Oh my God, is he the sexiest thing you ever saw in your whole life or what,' and, 'Wouldn't you purely LOVE to jump his bones?' Now, I have the gift of being able to learn languages just by listening over a period of time, but what she means by that, I cannot decipher. I hope she is not referring to the old woman calling for her turtle shell of thirteen bones. I really would not care to repeat such a harrowing experience."

"That is strange indeed," said Hakim, looking up as two young women entered the tent and proceeded to examine the shelves full of creams and potions and perfumes. They coyly refused his offer of assistance but stared hard at Ahmed, who had removed his headdress. They began to giggle and one of them whispered something. The old man thought he heard her say the word "bones' but did not catch the rest of it. Ahmed seemed too preoccupied to notice.

"I have had this dream over and over," he said. "At first I tried to dismiss it. You know I have had no eyes for any woman since my poor wife, Olga, died in that terrible cholera epidemic three years ago. But this woman persists in haunting me. I cannot help but feel we are destined to meet somehow. At the same time I cannot imagine how I am to meet her. I know not where she lives, what her name is, or anything about how to find her. Then I thought perhaps you could help me, with your powers of magic and vision."

"I will see what can be done," said the old man. "Come back tomorrow and I will have your answer."

When Ahmed returned the next day, the magician had set up a large crystal upon a small table and motioned for Ahmed to sit down on the cushion before the little table. It was very early in the morning, so there were not many people about yet. Hakim sat on the opposite side and stared intently into the crystal for several minutes after instructing Ahmed to be perfectly silent. Ahmed watched as the old man seemed to go into a trance. Then just when Ahmed thought he could not bear the suspense any longer, Hakim spoke.

"I can see your woman," he said. "But things do not look well. She lives not only in another country, but also in an entirely different century. Over a thousand years from now. Yes, it is indeed you she watches and sighs over in her magic box. Her name is RoZita."

"RoZita...But that is an Arabic name." Ahmed figured it was all right to break his silence now.

"Ah no...she lives in a country that has not even been discovered yet. And I must inform you this woman is a bit strange. She likes to think of herself as a…a warrior princess. Of course that is only a fantasy of hers, which she herself knows to be foolish. In reality she works in a shop hundreds of times larger than any of these. It is dull work and the people she meets are uninspiring, or as she puts it, they 'don't get it.' Her magic box is an escape from it. It is a magical age she lives in, where one can watch stories as well as hear and read them. And she likes to draw stories just as you do. Oddly enough, some of those stories are of you."

"That is strange indeed," said Ahmed. "I never supposed myself worthy of such esteem. I think she would not want to be a warrior and have adventures if she knew what it truly involved. When I was in battle with the Wendol, I would have given anything to be in her place. Can she possibly know how fraught with danger and fear adventure is? And fear is a terrible, terrible thing. Courage is not a matter of overcoming that fear, but only of doing what must be done in spite of it."

"I believe she knows more than you give her credit for," said Hakim, reaching for another chocolate. "Which is why she writes instead of having adventures of her own."

"Is there a way I can possibly meet her? I feel we are destined to be together, or why would I keep dreaming of her?"

The old man stared into the crystal a long moment without saying a word. Then slowly he rose and went behind a curtain flap in the tent, and soon returned with a tray full of bottles as Ahmed resisted the temptation to wipe a smudge off the crystal. Then as the younger man watched, the old magician began pouring drops from each bottle into a small cup. He chanted some strange words over it, waving his gnarled hand around the cup in a curiously graceful, birdlike motion, then wiggled his fingers and sang a little wordless song over the strange-smelling mixture.

"There is a new moon tonight," he said, sounding entranced. "Take this, and at the stroke of midnight, kneel before your bedroom window facing toward the west. Remove all your clothing except your loincloth. Then drink this potion and chant the name 'RoZita' over and over. Then you must sing this tune..." The old man proceeded to hum a melody that all Americans would have recognized as "Arkansas Traveler." "But prepare yourself for a shock. That affair with the Vikings may look very mundane compared with what may befall you this time around."

Ahmed smiled at him with profound gratitude, then proceeded to buy several bottles and flasks and jars from him, giving him much more money than they were worth. He smiled almost shyly, saying, "In my dream she sometimes called me her 'little Arabian stallion.' Strange, that is just what Olga called me. She told me the Northwomen used to speculate on…ah…whether I was like a stallion in that…ah…"

He blushed a little. The old man laughed wheezily.

"Then Mah-Doh-Nah was wrong?" he said impishly. Ahmed looked down at the floor of the tent, his smile fading. Mah-Doh-Nah, the notorious belly dancer whose name the Baghdad Enquirer had linked with his own some years ago, whose outrageous behavior was the scandal of the entire Middle East, who had cast her eye on Ahmed determined to have her way with him despite the small fact that he was happily married. When he turned her down she had gone about saying many spiteful things about him, such as "I would never bed a man in Viking boots." She even dared to suggest that he was far less like a stallion than Olga, with her charming and reckless candor, had publicly claimed he was.

"I am not more spectacularly endowed than most men, I suppose," Ahmed said with his characteristic modesty. "But Mah-Doh-Nah never knew firsthand."

Hakim chuckled. "Let us hope our RoZita has better luck," he said, then helped Ahmed place his purchases in a large sack.

That night, up in his small but elegantly furnished bedroom, Ahmed stripped down to his loincloth and knelt before the western wall as if in prayer, but instead he did as the magician had instructed, his eyes fixed upon the new moon.

And a millennium later, in a yet undiscovered country, a woman sat in front of her magic box with her cat in her lap, sighing over the man she could see through the glass screen…

…when suddenly a huge ball of light shot out of the box…

…engulfing her completely…

…and the first thing she knew she was lying flat on her back in the middle of a forest, looking up into the face of the man she had been watching…

…who was now completely naked.

~to be continued~


	2. Displaced

Chapter 2~

Elena de la Vega sat down under the big old tree to wait until Alejandro would come to meet her in their trysting place beside the waterfall. She idly plucked a buttercup and smiled to herself, picturing him riding up on Tornado in his close-fitting trousers and open-chested shirt, smiling at her, his incredibly handsome features lighting as they always did at the sight of her with pure adoration she never felt she deserved…her smile faded. What could be keeping him? He should have been here by now…

Suddenly a noise startled her to her feet, a sound like thunder and yet not quite-more like a very loud explosive buzzing, as though a beehive had erupted, then what appeared to be a fireball shot from the clouds and fell in the meadow. She screamed and covered her eyes as another fireball shot out, thinking either the woods were on fire or the world was coming to an end.

Then all was still. She crouched trembling, fearing to open her eyes, as though she believed she would not find herself in the same place if she did so. Finally, when she could hear the birds singing again, she dared to open her eyes. And she heard voices, although she could not understand their words.

One of them was Alejandro's!

She whirled about but could not see him for all the trees. Then she heard the other voice, which sounded female.

She pressed her lips together. Perhaps, she thought, I fell asleep and just dreamed those fireballs. Or are they another of Alejandro's conjuring tricks?

But that woman was certainly not something he conjured!

She went into the cave, and came quickly back out with a long sword.

Then she slipped through the trees, and saw the man and the woman, who was lying flat on her back, the man nearby her. Elena did not recognize her at all. But without a doubt the man was Alejandro, although his hair was a bit shorter and his skin seemed somehow darker.

And he was just as naked as the day he was born.

~O~O~

Ahmed, not realizing that he was naked, looked down at the woman lying at his feet. She appeared much younger and slimmer than in his dream, her hair a lighter brown, verging on blonde. She wore a very colorful garment, something like a caftan, that was much too big for her, and a Japanese kimono over that. Her feet were bare.

She lay blinking up at him. Her eyes were as green as in his dreams, and her face was the same face, but surely this couldn't be the same woman. She looked not much out of girlhood. Perhaps it was her daughter or a much younger sister, and the magician had made a mistake with the potion. Ahmed was greatly dismayed. All he needed was some giggling adolescent simpering after him-he could have stayed in Baghdad for that.

But that wasn't the strangest thing. She did not seem to recognize him at all!

"Where am I?" she gasped. "Who are you? How did I get here? I - I..."

Her eyes swept downward, and Ahmed realized that he had nothing on. He backed off, blushing, then made a ridiculous attempt to cover himself with his hands. His loincloth must have been torn off by the impact of the ball of light that had engulfed him as he knelt chanting the spell. Then he spied a large tree branch that must also have been knocked down by the fireball, with many leaves still attached, and he snatched that up and held it in front of himself. A bit too late, she had seen all there was to see. But she did not look at all displeased.

"You…do not know me?" He was surprised to hear himself speaking perfect albeit accented English, and understanding what he was saying.

"No, I'm afraid not," said the young woman, sitting up and glancing all around. Then she looked up at him again. "Am I supposed to?"

"You watched my Viking story on your magic box so often. You do not remember at all?" He wondered if the magician's potion had perhaps destroyed her memory, along with knocking twenty years off her age. If so, it would certainly complicate things.

"Sir," she said, looking straight up at him, "if I had ever even seen you before, believe you me, I would remember!" She glanced aside blushing a little, then looked sideways at him, with a little smile that was half shy and half flirtatious. "That's a compliment," she added.

He reached a hand down to help her up, somewhat relieved to see that at least she was about a hand's breadth shorter than himself. He could look down at the top of her head without having to step up on a rock.

"I get it!" she said, snapping her fingers. "I've died and gone to heaven, right? And you're an angel maybe?" She looked all round at the beautiful, verdant countryside, at the waterfall in the distance, the huge trees, the meadow of golden poppies and blue lupine and romania. Then back at him. Then down at herself.

"Oh my god," she gasped, plucking at the outsized caftan. "Where on earth this thing come from? It's miles too big! I bet I look like an absolute blob in it - I must look a mess! Would you please tell me what is going on here?"

"I am not certain myself," Ahmed said truthfully. He wondered just what he had let himself in for, and if there was anyway of undoing the spell...

~O~O~

Alejandro had to stop the horse and get off, feeling as though he would fall off otherwise. His head was spinning and he felt he would throw up. He had never felt like this before except when drunk, and he had not been drunk in many months.

He pulled Tornado to the side of the road and dismounted, then knelt down until the dizziness passed. What is wrong with me, he thought. I should not have come...but what would my Elena think? He had sent his manservant, Ernesto, to her house earlier with a note saying that he was ill, but Ernesto had returned saying she had gone. So Alejandro had set out for their secret place, and now he was beginning to think he had made a huge mistake.

"Perhaps," he said to Tornado-he had developed the habit of talking to his horse when they were alone, not as one usually talked to a horse, but rather as he might have talked to another human being, "perhaps there was something in my breakfast that disagreed with my constitution. Perhaps my cook is trying to poison me? A hero cannot be too careful. One has enemies from every quarter. It is never safe, always having to watch one's back, it is almost like being a bandit, only people do not expect a bandit to save the world..."

He plucked a poppy from the roadside and twirled it between his fingers. He thought of Elena with a mixture of pain and ecstasy: her flashing eyes, her creamy skin, her flowing jet-black hair, her soft body lying next to his on the very first day they had made love...he was overcome with dizziness once more. He did not even know how far he was from the waterfall. Suddenly a wave of nausea gripped him and he lurched over and vomited in some manzanita bushes. Then he knelt down once more, feeling faint.

"Well, at least I shall not die of poison now," he said to Tornado when he had regained a measure of his strength. "But I should not have come. My dear one will think me a fool. If only I had stayed home she would have come to me, and would have taken care of me at my house. As it is, I may die here out on the road!"

He experienced a flash of self-pity. Confronted with a villain he would have known what to do, perhaps. But in the face of his own illness he was nearly as helpless as a year-old baby. All men are children when they are sick and Alejandro was no different in that respect.

"Tornado," he said fretfully, "it does seem as though she would get worried when I did not show and come to see about me, yes? So why does she not come? If she loved me she would, surely?"

He knew he was being foolish even as he spoke. But he felt so alone and abandoned here on the road. Like a sick and dying dog. Not like a fox at all.

Tornado looked down at him with eyes that seemed to hold sympathy and concern, and that was comforting. Alejandro had always felt a special bond with horses. Once, when he was a boy, someone had made fun of his Indian pony yelling, "Why don't you swap that overgrown jack rabbit for a REAL hoss so yer heels won't drag the ground!" then bellowed with derisive laughter. Alejandro had made the pony jump right over his tormenter and knock him into the mud, which put an end to all jokes about the animal's size. That, and the fact that Alejandro managed to steal his tormenter's fine new leather boots, which were too big for Alejandro but fit his brother Joaquin just fine . . ..

He stood up once more and draped an arm around Tornado's glossy black neck. "Help me to walk," he pleaded, "then when we get there, Elena will take care of me in our cave. Just the way I took care of my dear master, Don Diego, when he was ill that one time, remember? I am so glad that I had the chance to help him then, after he did so much for me. Where would I be now if not for him, I wonder? I only wish I could have helped him to forget all those dreadful years in that awful prison, and given him the will to live again."

A wave of sadness washed over him and tears filled his eyes. Childishly he rubbed a hand over them, wishing for Elena to come and comfort him, and plodded on. His legs felt wobbly but he managed to keep upright. And soon he realized that the road was not deserted. He could hear the clop-clop-crunch of hooves. This, he knew, could be either friend or foe, so he reached for his sword, willing his strength to come back to him. Then suddenly a gunshot rang out, startling the always-excitable Tornado, who reared up with a frightened whinny, knocking Alejandro over to the side of the road. Alejandro dropped the sword as a multitude of men came springing at him in every direction...


	3. Carnal Love

~Chapter 3~

Ahmed thought he heard a footstep behind him and he turned abruptly, still holding the branch in front of himself. The girl gasped.

"What a fanTAStic tush!" she exclaimed before she could stop herself.

Then she clamped both hands over her mouth trying to push the words back in, turning very red. Ahmed turned back to her. He had heard but did not understand and he had not seen the source of the footstep.

"I beg your pardon?" he said. She murmured something but her hands were still clamped over her mouth so that her words were muffled. He found himself blushing also.

"I'm sorry," she gasped, finally removing her hands. "I just meant that you have the most perfect, luscious butt I have ever seen on man or beast, I have never been so gloriously mooned in my entire life... Sorry. I'd be mad as hell if a guy I didn't know said that to me, but the words just flew out of my mouth... Here, take this..." She removed the Japanese kimono and handed it to him. "This'll probably fit you better than it fits me anyway."

She turned her back while he put on the kimono. It was black with a beautiful pattern of flying cranes and bamboo trees etched in gold. Then with a smile in his voice he said, "You may look now."

She turned only halfway around. Although she was thinner than in his dream, she was still not what he would have called skinny, he noted with approval. And although she was not the mature woman he had hoped for, she was certainly no simpering adolescent, either.

"You must think I'm just horrible," she said in a little-girlish voice.

"Women are not so bold where I come from," he admitted with a half smile. "Most women, that is. However, your boldness does not offend me. There is something innocent and charming about it. Although I do not know if other men less well traveled than I would find it so."

"I'm not usually this bold. I've never said a thing like that to any guy in my entire life, not even my ex-boyfriend. But all this stuff has made me kind of crazy, it's just so weird and ... Where DO you come from, anyway?"

"I am from Araby," he said. "From the-"

"Araby? Saudi Arabia? You don't look like any Saudi I ever saw."

"No no no no no, farther to the East. Perhaps you know it as Persia?"

"Persia? As in Iran? Where they've got our guys held hostage at the Embassy?" "Hostage? I do not know what you mean." He had nearly forgotten that they were not in the same century any more. And how was he going to explain to her what happened so that she would believe him? She would think him totally mad!

"You know-the terrorists and all. Don't worry, I wouldn't hold it against you. There was this Iranian guy that worked at the pizza place where I and some of my friends used to hang out, and they fired him just for being an Iranian. I cut out going there after that, he was really a nice guy and it was pretty mean to treat him like that. You don't look like any terrorist to me. But could you possibly explain to me how I got here? You're gonna think I'm nuts, but I haven't a clue. I don't have the faintest recollection what I was doing before I landed here. I don't do drugs and I don't drink, and I'm not the party-till-I-puke type. I'm the original Miss Goody Two Shoes, if you must know. Maybe somebody slipped me something. I bet it was that creep that's been trying to get me to go out with him, I... Oh my God, will you look at that?"

He looked behind him where she pointed. There, at the edge of the meadow, stood his snow-white camel, Fezeek. That must have been the footstep he had heard.

"It's a camel!" she exclaimed in delight. "Must be an albino, right? Is he yours?"

"He is mine," Ahmed said, relieved for a moment to be spared the necessity of explaining the situation to her, although he knew he would have to think of something to tell her sooner or later. He saw that Fezeek was laden with large bags, and was nibbling leaves from a tree nearby. She started to run to him, then hesitated.

"Does he bite or kick?" she asked.

"Camels are somewhat unpredictable," Ahmed said. "Perhaps you had better not go too close to him just yet." He went to Fezeek himself and examined the bags slung across the animal's hump. He tossed them one by one to the ground.

"This kinda looks like California," she said looking all around. "I haven't been to California since I was a little kid, but I've seen a lot of movies and pictures, and this looks like the way John Steinbeck describes the California countryside in East of Eden. It sure doesn't look like Iran or Saudi Arabia. But what on earth would a camel be doing in California, that's what I'd like to know?"

Ahmed opened one of the bags and found some of his own clothes within. Another bag contained a tent. On Fezeek's other side he found a long bundle of tent poles.

"Wow," she exclaimed, "for a guy that was wearing nothing but his birthday suit when I first saw you, you sure came equipped! What's that, a tent?"

"Yes. I am sorry about the, the suit, RoZita. I do not know how that happened. I-"

"What did you call me?" She stared at him.

"RoZita... Is that not your name?"

"It's Rose. Nobody ever calls me RoZita. Well, my sister does, once in a…who are you anyway? What the hell is going on here? This is getting scary." She drew back, her eyes full of consternation.

"You are not ...'Zita the warrior princess'?" He hoped that title would at least jog her memory, wondering what sort of trick the old magician, who had seemed so honest, had played on him.

"WHAT?" she nearly screamed, startling Fezeek so that the camel jumped forward a step or two.

"Is this not the year 2000?" It suddenly occurred to Ahmed that perhaps he had somehow landed in the wrong year.

"Buddy, it's nineteen-EIGHTY," she said, her eyes wider than ever. Boy, they must do years differently where you come from. And I'm a warrior about like the Ayatollah Khomeini is a boy scout... You DO know who he is, right?"

Ahmed, normally quick witted, still could not think of a thing to tell her. All he could think was to distract her until he came up with an idea.

"Please help me pitch this tent, RoZita-I mean Rose," he said nervously, "and then I will try to explain. Although you will not believe me."

"Look," she said, without moving, "I don't claim to be the most sophisticated person on the block, but I wasn't born yesterday either. Day before yesterday, maybe. But definitely not yesterday. So don't try treating me liked I'm some stupid kid. Now are you gonna tell me what's going on or, or..." Suddenly she backed off, her eyes full of terror.

"Rose," he made a move to try to steady her, but she flinched away from his touch.

"I know what it is," she exclaimed. "You ARE one of them! You've kidnapped me, that's what it is. You drugged and abducted me, and you're holding me hostage too!"

~O~O~

He was lean, red faced and sandy haired, with cold blue eyes and thin lips. Except that he was a little shorter and stockier, broader shouldered and not as good looking, he bore a slight resemblance to his younger brother, the late Captain Harrison Love. His name was Cornelius, but he was nicknamed Carnal for his lusty fleshly appetites.

As he shaved and dressed, he could hear his wife Ruby Mae arguing with the cook, and he grimaced to himself. And then he thought of the delectable Elena Montero.

"Down, boy," he said with a grin, patting the sudden bulge in the front of his pants.

He was on his way out the door when he heard his wife's voice call out, "Cornelius, where are you going?"

Love groaned inwardly, feeling a strong urge to slap that fat nagging heifer upside the head.

"I'm goin' to take the damn steer to the damn butcher, Ruby Mae, where the hell do you think I'm goin'?" he growled, glaring at the Mexican cook, Pepa, as though she were the one who had asked the question.

Their fat eight-year-old son, Willy, was sitting on a stool in the kitchen, poking holes in a mound of bread dough with his finger and putting the finger in his mouth, then back into the dough. Then he dug his finger in his ear and then stuck it back into the dough.

"When will you be back?" Ruby Mae asked.

"Hell, I don't know," Love snapped, figuring if he didn't get out of there soon, he was going to burn the whole damn house down. "When I get back, I reckon. And supper had damn well be on the table then, you hear that?"

"No la toca!" cried Pepa, slapping Willy's hand away from the bread dough. He gave a yell, then growled "Bitch" in imitation of his papa.

Love shook his head as he exited the house, which was Spanish in style. He went off to the pasture for the steer and with the help of his ranch hand, Pepa's husband Pancho, loaded him onto the wagon and hitched the horses to it.

"Don't go makin' love to any of my cows while I'm gone, you greasy Spic, you hear me?" Love said to Pancho by way of a joke, slapping the Mexican on the back. As Love mounted the wagon and rode off, Pancho made an insulting gesture with his finger behind Love's back.

"Chinga tu madre, pendejo," he snarled when Love was out of hearing distance.

After he had dropped off the steer at the butcher's and collected his money, Love set off once more, but not in the direction of the ranch house.

He was riding in the direction of a certain camp on a certain mountain, not too far from a certain waterfall.

A young gypsy was waiting there for him, trying to look like she wasn't. She was a rather small, dark girl, dressed in a dirty white blouse that showed most of her tits and shoulders, a few strings of cheap-looking beads hanging around her neck. Her skirt was patched and came almost up to her knees and her dirty feet were in leather sandals. She was good looking in her dark animal way, but she didn't even come close to Elena Montero, thought Love, licking his lips. The fairest lady in all the land, and she was gonna be his.

That is, after he got his hands on that bastard Murieta.

He knew Alejandro from his wild and woolly bandit days, when his brother Joaquin was still alive, and that old geezer with the three fingers. The three of them had stolen one of his prize porkers once. They were just brazen enough to leave the pig's head on Love's front door step with a note saying how tasty the meat was and congratulating him on raising such a fine hog, and the head was a thank-you gift. The note was in Spanish but Pancho had translated it for him and then burst out laughing.

And now Alejandro Murieta had come up in the world and was regarded by all as a hero. He had killed Love's brother, Harrison. Carnal Love was gonna get him for that. And then he was gonna have Elena. Oh yes-indeedy-sunshine he was!

The gypsy was sitting beneath a tree leaning back on the trunk, fiddling with her beads and humming a slightly obscene song.

"Ehhhh, muchacho," she called out to him lazily, making out like she wasn't glad to see him, but her eyes gave her away. He suppressed a snort.

"Gimme a big kiss, Nestrelda darlin'," Love said, hopping down from the wagon seat. He strode up to her with his arms wide open. Nestrelda hesitated, as though making up her mind whether or not to go to him, then stood up and allowed him to embrace and kiss her. Far behind her he could see three of her cutthroat pals. One of them slumped against a tree, swigging at a jug of rum and belching. Another sat in the shade gnawing on God knows what kind of meat, another smoked a marijuana cigarette with a silly expression on his none too beautiful face.

Three meaner-looking hombres you wouldn't want to see anywhere.

Love slapped Nestrelda on the rump as he planted a loud kiss on her lips. She said, "Ooooo papito, I like when you do that."

"What's Butt Sniffin' Dog eatin' there?" he pointed at the half-breed Indian sitting in the shade, whose real name was Charlie Black Goose.

"Rattlesnake," laughed Nestrelda. "If you ask him pretty please, he might share his bounty."

"I'll pass," Love laughed also. "Listen here, angel face. You know a feller by the name of Alejandro Murieta?"

He didn't know why he asked her that. The slut knew every bastard in California, damn nearly. But how her face lit up when Love spoke his name!

"Alejandro Murieta?" she exclaimed. "Ayyyyyy-prettiest man in all California!" She bared her teeth and rolled up her beady black eyes in a look of pure lust. Love was a little taken aback. That bitch was hardly human. It almost scared him at times.

"How'd you like to get your sweet little meat hooks on him?" Love asked her. She made a noise in her throat like a sow in heat. "I thought so," he laughed.

"Digame mas, mi amor," she purred.

"After you give me some sugar, maybe?" He ran a hand down one of her long black braids.

"Noooowwwww," she begged. He laughed.

"I know the place he goes to meet his fancy lady," he said. "I've been watching him. It's by the waterfall-you know where that is, Pussycat?" She nodded. "How would you and them nice pals of yours like a job? You reckon them smelly old mudcats there would be up for a little fun and games?"

Nestrelda looked back at the smelly old mudcats. "They always up for fun, papito!" she snickered.

"Hey Scourge!" Love yelled at the man leaning against the tree. Scourge was an ex-pirate. He used to call himself, with his dazzling originality, "The Scourge of the Seven Seas," but since the Gold Rush he had taken his piratic activities to dry land. He was huge with tattoos all over his bald head and brawny arms, as well as in other more unlikely places. But he still had both his eyes, both hands, and both legs. And he knew how to use them.

"Hey Scourge!" Love yelled. "Think ya could manage to fart a little louder? Don't think they heard ya over in Wyoming!"

Nestrelda giggled shrilly. "That ain't nice," she scolded him. "You got to be more polite to my friends if you don't want them to roast your cojones."

"Right," Love laughed. "Hey Scourge, how 'bout haulin' that great big tattooed arse of yours over here and see if you can get Butt Sniffin' Dog away from his rattlesnakes and that greasy Cochino away from his loco-weed for a few minutes. I got a little job for y'all!"

~O~O~

Elena couldn't trust her eyes! There was a camel! A big white one!

And Alejandro tossed some bags onto the ground and spoke with the young woman. He wore her kimono now.

But suddenly she turned away from him and began to run.

The beautiful man called, "ROSE!" and tried to catch her arm but she was faster and slid through his fingers.

Then she ran straight toward the waterfall to find a hiding-place and discovered Elena.

"Please help meeee!" the strange woman cried out. Elena, clutching her sword, ran to the woman to help her because the mysterious man was almost behind her.

Breathless and loud, with Alejandro's husky voice, which left Elena shuddering, he called once more, "Please RoZita, wait, wait, WAIT! I will not hurt you! LET ME TRY TO EXPLAIN!"

And then the three met…


	4. Bewildered

~Chapter 4~

Slowly Alejandro came to his senses. His whole body ached. His stomach still cramped. His head hurt, his eyes were burning, he couldn't open them.

Yet he could hear murmuring and whispering beside his ear. Suddenly he felt strange lips against his mouth. Elena? No, it could not be, she never wore that kind of cheap, strong scent . . . . He pressed his own lips tightly together and turned his head from side to side although he felt totally dizzy, trying to open his eyes. There was an unbearable pain at the back of his head.

The female voice beside him murmured, "Eh, mi guapito, if you don't want to kiss me I'll try something else!" Alejandro noticed she began to unbutton his pants. He wanted push her away but it was impossible because his wrists were tied together and his ankles too.

This was too much! Finally he opened his eyes and used the muscles of his belly and stood up and the woman lay on the ground. She sprang up with a stream of language Alejandro had never heard even from a whore, seized him by his shirt and tore it down the back. Then he saw a bald and tattooed man nearly twice his size coming toward him. Alejandro had seen him before but only on WANTED posters. It was the infamous pirate known as Scourge, and he looked even scarier in real life than on the posters.

And to his left loomed another face that looked familiar. It bore a slight resemblance to that of Captain Harrison Love.

But Captain Love was dead.

As Rose tried to flee from her supposed kidnapper, she stepped on the hem of her too-long gown and fell flat on her face. As Ahmed bent with the intention of helping her up, she rolled away from him to where the bags he had dropped lay. She snatched a scimitar that had fallen from one of them, and sat up holding the haft in both hands, the curved blade pointed toward him.

"Don't come near me," she said in a melodramatic whisper. "Or I'll make shish kabob out of you."

She was amazed at herself. All she knew about using the weapon consisted of knowing which end went where.

But he didn't make a move. She felt herself go weak in the knees. Even in the ridiculous kimono he had grandeur, not so much because of his physical size, which was not impressive, but rather because of his bearing and grace. She could believe he was a prince. He didn't look much like an Arab or an Iranian, for that matter. She would have guessed Spanish. His face was all sensuous Latinate curves with enough ruggedness to save it from being insipidly pretty. His hair was curly and sweaty and tendrils of it clung to his forehead in a way that made him all the more appealing.

But it was his eyes that truly held her. Under normal circumstances they would have had her gasping for breath. Surely no terrorist ever had such soft, large, kindly, brown eyes with a jewel-like depth and luster, fringed with lashes a woman would have coveted. Rose sometimes prided herself on "not being some pathetic bimbo" like almost every other girl she knew, who fell for every line they heard from any guy who wasn't butt-ugly. But not even in the movies had she ever seen a face to equal his, a cross between that of a Don Juan and an angel.

She backed off a couple of inches on her rear end, still clutching the scimitar, but he still made no move toward her. Who was he? Why had he been naked when she had first seen him? Her first thought was that he meant to rape her, but that didn't make much sense. She was unworldly even for a girl in her twenties, but even she was aware that rapists didn't usually get naked prior to assaulting their victims. And he looked like the last guy on earth who needed to rape anybody. On the contrary, he looked like he needed that blade to keep women, and men too for that matter, from molesting him in public.

And then she heard running steps. Still holding the scimitar, she turned her head just in time to see a young woman in a long black dress running toward them, brandishing a long sword, her long hair flying behind her like a black banner.

"ALEJANDRO! What do you think you are doing?" she screamed. She was the most beautiful woman Rose had ever seen. But she looked outraged. And evidently she knew the man.

"He kidnapped me," cried Rose, backing off from him toward the woman. "I don't know how it happened, but…"

"Madame," he said, "there is some mistake. My name is Ahmed, and I have never seen you before. I come from - "

"Alejandro, have you gone totally mad? What is the meaning of this? Why did you cut your hair? Who is that girl, and what is going on? I demand to know!"

Her speech sounded strangely old fashioned, like her dress. Evidently she had forgotten the camel, if she had seen it at all. She held the sword out as though she would run him through, and made a move as if to do so.

Suddenly Rose cried out, "NO!" and struck the sword out of the woman's hand with the scimitar.

Elena stood as if in shock, looking down at the sword the girl had struck out of her hand. The girl looked as stunned as Elena felt.

The man picked up the fallen sword. Holding it by the blade, he silently handed it back to Elena, stepping from the shade into the sunlight so she could see his face more clearly.

"You - you are not my Alejandro," she stammered. "You have scars on your face - Alejandro has none. Yet your features are identical to his, your build is the same, and so is your voice. He never told me he had a twin brother! An older brother, yes, but not a twin!"

"Madame," Ahmed said, "I seem to be suffering from loss of memory. I have no idea how I got here, and neither does this unfortunate girl. I believe we were both drugged and abducted and brought here by-by Iranian terrorists, but how and why, I have no idea. I remember only my name, nothing else."

"Iranian? What is that?" Elena exclaimed. "A country I never heard of?"

"Whaaaaaat?" the brown-haired girl said. "Holy cow, have you been living under a rock? Iran? The country that took our guys hostage at the Embassy in Teheran, remember?"

Elena stared at her. The girl still held the scimitar. She was pretty in an Anglo-Saxon goody-girl way, in spite of the outsized garment she wore, but her speech sounded very strange even for an American. Elena could hardly understand her at all; it was as though she had come out of a whole different era.

"I do not know what you are talking about," Elena said rather coldly. "What is 'our-guys-hostage'? What is a terrorist? And what is holy about a cow? I live in a hacienda, there is no rock above it or even near it."

Rose suddenly burst out laughing, not as if she found anything funny; it was just as if she had suddenly gone crazy. Ahmed put a steadying hand on her arm, and she managed to calm down after a minute.

"She is completely bewildered, Madame," he explained. "Can you please tell us where we are?"

"You are in California," Elena said, "a few miles from Los Angeles, in the -"

"We're in L.A.?" Rose gasped. "I was sure we were somewhere near Hollywood, everybody I've bumped into around here is drop-dead gorgeous and wearing funny costumes-or no costumes at all, if you know what I mean, both of which are perfectly in keeping with Tinseltown…Boy howdy, I must look like a mud fence."

Ahmed said, "This man who looks like me? Where is he? Perhaps he can be of assistance?"

"He was supposed to meet me here at the hour of noon," Elena said looking up at the sky. "I have been waiting for him for a long time. I wonder what could be keeping him?"

She looked up again trying to determine the time by the position of the sun. Rose looked at a band she wore on her wrist.

"It's one twenty-five by my watch," she said, "and...oh my God, you're not gonna believe this, the date says . . . 1849! Can you imagine? I must have been asleep the last time I set this baby!" She burst out laughing again.

"What is so funny? It IS 1849," Elena said.

~O~O~

Alejandro couldn't move. It seemed he had fainted.

But his mind worked fast. He tried to concentrate on saving himself. He remembered the countless training lessons with Don Diego, about all the different methods of fighting against many men.

Then he realized he was tied to a tree.

The next thing he sensed were greedy hands running over his arms, his chest and downward once more. He heard Nestrelda whispering, "Ohhhh Sweeeetieee! Mmmmmm! NOW I will have you, yes!" And once again she pulled at his pants. Although he felt a terrible dizziness he brought his forehead against hers with his with all his strength. She lurched backwards, rubbing her forehead and swearing with pain. Then she sprang forward and slapped his face hard.

The tree bark cut into Alejandro's bare and bleeding back, his arms cruelly twisted behind his back. Suddenly he felt a terrible burning pain across his chest and stomach, which already ached from the punches and kicks he had received. Through half-open lids in front of him he saw Scourge grinning with a whip in his hand, asking, "How do you feel now, hey? HERO! Ha ha ha!" His breath reeked of rum.

Alejandro spat in the pirate's face. Scourge raised his arm again and cracked the whip once more.

Love stepped forward once more with a cigar between his teeth, nudging Scourge out of his way. He stepped close to Alejandro and blew the smoke straight into his face. Alejandro coughed until he suddenly felt the burning end of the cigar on his shoulder.

"Reckon it's time I went out and fetched the lovely Señorita Montero to come join the party, right, amigos?" Love said with a little chuckle. "Wouldn't want her to miss out on all the fun, hey?"

"Oh right, and I'm Dolly Parton with a boob reduction," Rose said rolling her eyes up. "So where are all the gold miners, may I ask?"

Then she saw that Elena looked perfectly serious. Rose felt seriously spooked, herself. This woman didn't LOOK crazy. But it was evident that she truly believed it was 1849. This has got to be a dream, thought Rose giddily, looking at the jeweled and intricately carved ivory hilt of the scimitar. Or I AM on a movie set, or I AM on drugs, or, or…

"Someone is coming," Ahmed said suddenly. "I hear hoofbeats."

"That will be Alejandro," Elena exclaimed, her face lighting with joy and excitement. Whew . . . she was perfectly breathtaking, thought Rose with a little ache of envy.

Soon the most magnificent black stallion she had ever seen came galloping out from the trees, beautiful in keeping with the humans, but foaming and looking extremely agitated. He wore a saddle and bridle but had no rider.

"Tornado!" gasped Elena, looking outright terrified.


	5. Dizziness

~Chapter 5~

"Where is Alejandro?" Elena demanded as though she expected the horse to answer. "He must be injured somewhere - captured by bandits perhaps…Tornado, take me to him!"

She quickly mounted the black stallion. Ahmed ran to her, saying, "Wait, wait, wait, WAIT!" sounding so much like Alejandro that she halted. "Madame," he said, "you cannot just go riding off like this. If he is in danger, you could be killed. What do you think you could do for him?"

"I have weapons," she said, but she did stop the horse and wheel him around to face the Arab, knowing he had a good point.

"What do you think can have happened? Who would want to capture him, and why?" Ahmed reasoned.

Elena looked paler than ever. "I have heard some tales of a band of outlaws who have a lair in these hills," she said. "Probably the stories are somewhat exaggerated, but…They say one of them is an ex-pirate, and…but what would they want with Alejandro?"

Rose edged in closer saying, "Is there someone who might have a grudge against him?" She was thinking of all the Western movies she had seen. Seemed like there was always someone with a grudge.

"I do not know." Elena's brow puckered. "I have not lived long in this country. There was a man he killed about a month ago, a very wicked man, a Captain Harrison Love. It is possible he has relatives who could want vengeance for his death…But I do not know who they could be. However, I am sure Tornado can take us to him. Alejandro and Tornado seem to have an, an affinity."

"We cannot ride out dressed like this," Ahmed said. "I must change into something I can ride in, and" He looked sidelong at Rose.

"You are right," Elena said in her abrupt way, and she dismounted the horse. "Come with me," she said to Rose. "You don't look my size, but perhaps I have some things in the cave that may fit you. If you want to come along, that is."

Rose had an idea Elena didn't think much of her. That she didn't have the brains or the stamina to be of any use, that she would just get in the way. Perhaps she was right, at that. The thought of riding out to rescue a guy from a gang of criminals was a bit weird for her blood. Once more she wondered if she were dreaming.

But she heard herself saying, "I do want to come along."

Ahmed said, "Rose, you must stay here. I cannot put your life in danger like this. I did not mean for this to happen. I am an experienced warrior, and perhaps I can help. But I will not risk your life."

"I don't want to stay alone out here!" Rose protested. "What if the terrorists are still around? Who knows, maybe they're the ones who took what's his name? I don't have any weapons and wouldn't know how to use them even if I did. I WON'T stay here by myself, I'm going with you!"

"Come along then," Elena grabbed her by the wrist. "We have no time to stand around arguing." To Ahmed, "I have some things of Alejandro's that will fit you too. You and he are the same size."

"I have things of my own," Ahmed said, "but thank you for the offer, Madame."

"It's Elena," she said a bit snappishly, then practically dragged Rose along with her until they came to what appeared to be the opening to an underground cave.

"Tornado," Rose mused as she tried to keep up with Elena. "That was the name of Zorro's horse, you know. I used to watch -"

"That is right," Elena stopped and turned to look directly at her. "Alejandro IS Zorro. You know about him?"

"Of course. I used to watch Zorro on TV when I was a little kid. I -"

"On WHAT?"

"On...oh, I forgot, this is 1849," Rose laughed a little crazily. "Zorro was my hero. I used to put Z's all over the place with a black crayon. I put 'em all over this bed sheet and they wouldn't wash out, and I always had to have it on my bed. I got really mad when my mom put it on my sister's bed instead and threw a hissy fit, and..."

She broke off there because Elena was looking at her as though she were speaking Swahili. Rose wondered which of them was really the crazy one.

"Come, we've no time to lose standing around talking," Elena said, turning around back to the cave.

Rose followed her in wondering what they would use for a flashlight. Then she saw it wasn't necessary, there was a large skylight in the cave, and huge concentric circles of an interesting pattern. There was furniture in the cave: two chairs, two beds, a wood stove. Even a table with silver candlesticks on it. On the walls hung many weapons: swords, whips, and some really antique-looking guns. There was also a stable with a silvery white mare standing calmly within.

"She's yours?" Rose asked.

"She is," Elena said absently as she went to a trunk standing nearby and unlocked it. "Her name is Luna."

"She's a beauty," Rose said, going over to stroke the mare's neck. "What are all those ropes and stuff?"

Elena didn't seem to hear her. She lifted two pairs of pants from the trunk and two blouses.

"Here," she said, throwing one of the blouses and one pair of pants to Rose. "Put them on."

It was then Rose realized that she didn't have anything at all on under the caftan. She gasped.

"Ahem...I don't suppose you have any undies in there?" she said timidly. The idea of wearing someone else's underwear did not appeal to her, but it was preferable to wearing none, she supposed. Certainly she wouldn't be able to wear Elena's bra, it would be too small.

"Here." Elena tossed her some things. Rose stared at them dumbfounded. A camisole and long drawers, like she had seen in pictures. Holy cow! This woman really did think it was 1849. Next she'd hand her a corset, or did they not wear those until the 1860's?

But she put on the things, which were a little snug, while Elena changed also. The pants were a bit tight on Rose and buttoned up instead of zipping. They were a little long but she rolled them up. However, the blouse was too small.

"Um...this doesn't fit," she said, trying in vain to button it over her bosom. "My boobies are bigger than yours."

"Boobies?" Elena turned to look at her. She was already dressed, and she had braided her long black hair neatly down her back. She was tall for a Spanish woman, slender and graceful. Clearly one of those fiery beauties you usually saw only in the movies and on the covers of romance novels.

"Um...bosoms," Rose said, wondering if Elena would take offense at the bluntness. She'd read that back in the Victorian days they even put skirts on piano legs and all. Holy cow, she told herself, you're actually going to start believing it really is 1849 if you don't watch out…

"Here," Elena dug out another, larger shirt and tossed it to her. Obviously she had no time for prudery. "It's Alejandro's. Perhaps it will fit better."

It did fit, though it was a trifle large and certainly was low in front, and needed ironing. But it laced up and Rose was able to close it so she wouldn't feel so exposed.

"Try these," Elena said, lifting a pair of lace-up Indian moccasins from the trunk. "They look like they might fit you."

They did, and were very comfortable. Elena tied back Rose's shoulder-length hair with a leather thong as Rose put on the mocs.

"Your guy really thinks he's Zorro?" Rose said as she laced them up.

"He IS Zorro." Elena looked at her with flashing eyes, and Rose decided not to pursue the matter further. Elena tucked a pistol into her belt, then took down a second one.

"Do you know how to use this?" she asked. Rose shook her head.

"I know diddly squat about guns," she admitted. "But I've watched people fire them on TV a lot."

"Carry this," Elena handed her the pistol. "Tuck it into you belt. How did you meet Ahmed anyway?"

"I have no idea. I just woke up and there he was-in the buff, looking down at me. I haven't a clue how I got there. I'm still totally mystified."

"Perhaps he rescued you from the real kidnappers," Elena said as they made their way back through the cave's entrance. "If he is Alejandro's twin, then likely he has heroic qualities."

"That's possible. But if that's how it is, why doesn't he say so?"

"I think I know what happened," Elena said after a moment. "His mother bore twins, and the midwife stole one and sold it to a couple that could not have children. I've heard of such things. Then she told Alejandro's mother that the twin had died, or drugged her so she would forget she had born twins, or something. The couple was Persian, and they decided to go back to their native country. Then one day one or the other of Ahmed's supposed parents told him the truth, and he decided to come back here to find his real mother. I don't know where you fit in there, but it is the most plausible explanation I can think of at the moment."

Ahmed was waiting for them outside, dressed in tight black trousers and boots, a snow-white shirt open at the throat, showing chest hair. He had a sash wrapped around his waist, embroidered in scarlet and blue and gold in an oriental pattern, and his scimitar was thrust through it on one side, a small silver dagger on the other. Around his head he wore a scarlet turban. Both women caught their breath.

"We must have a plan," he said. "We cannot just ride out there without one."

"I suppose you are right," Elena said with a heavy sigh. "So, what is your plan?"

Ahmed didn't seem to have heard her. He was looking at their pistols.

"What are those?" he asked. He wore no gun at all.

"Pistols," Elena said in a dazed voice. Rose took her pistol and examined it, thinking how old fashioned it looked, like something out of an old Western. Call me Calamity Jane, she thought.

"They don't have pistols in Iran?" she said.

"What are they for?" he asked.

"Why, for shooting, of course." Elena looked at him incredulously. "You truly never saw one before?"

She pointed hers at the sky and made as if to pull the trigger. Rose jumped forward and grabbed her wrist.

"Don't!" She didn't quite know why she said that. She just had an idea that Ahmed would be frightened. "You'll scare Fezeek," she heard herself saying. Elena put the pistol in her belt.

"I am sorry, I didn't think," she said. "I would have brought a gun for you also, but I thought you would already have one. So how are we going after Alejandro if you have no weapons other than those?"

"I was once a warrior, as I said before," he said. "I needed no other weapons that these."

"You were in the army, and they did not teach you to shoot?"

"The army was very small. There were but thirteen of us, yet we were able to defeat the Wendol even though there were only four left alive at our last battle. And there were hundreds of them. We killed their leader and they retreated instantly."

"That makes sense," Rose said. "Just look at the German army after Hitler killed himself. The war was over almost immediately afterward. Without a strong leader people are like sheep...who are the Wendol?"

It was just then that the direction of the wind changed, blowing in the direction of the women, and Rose was able to smell the scent Ahmed had put on. It didn't even occur to her to wonder why he put on scent at a time like this. All she could think of was how rich and intoxicating it was. Something almost magical about it, it made her feel like she could believe anything he said.

Absolutely anything.

Elena looked as though she had caught the scent also.

"The guns contain bullets, which when fired from the gun barrel, can fly at an incredible speed," she explained. "They are more compact than bows and arrows, although they are also much noisier."

"I can shoot a bow and arrow," Rose offered. "I learned archery in high school. Although I don't claim to be any expert."

Elena went back into the cave to get more weapons, saying she was sure there were bows and arrows. Rose stared at Ahmed in dizzy wonder as she breathed in more and more of the delicious scent.

"You are the most beautiful man I ever saw in my entire life," she said breathily. "I would love to kiss you over and over on your luscious lips. And then...and then I want to jump you like a tigress and bite you into little pieces, and then…"

She made a move in his direction. He held out an arm to keep her away. He had not guessed that the scent would have this effect.

"My dear Rose, the time is not right," he said, backing off a step or two. "I cannot take advantage of you like this. We have other things to -"

"Take all the advantage you like, cutie buns! Don't you like me? Maybe I look too ugly in this get-up? I can always take it off, you know...or YOU could."

"You are lovely and charming and of course I like you. But...perhaps I had better tell the truth. I am from the tenth century. I had many dreams of you, so I went to a magician to procure a potion that would project me into the twentieth so I could come to you. But something went wrong and we both landed in a totally different era. Can you believe me?"

"Lover," she purred as she took hold of his sash, then ran her fingers up over his chest, "I would believe you if you told me you were an elephant disguised as a man and you came from Mars in a camel-shaped spaceship. Even though no elephant ever had a tush like yours, nor even a...oh, never mind!" she giggled coyly. "Come, my adorable studmuffin, peel me like a grape. Señorita Fireball and her hotsy-totsy Zorro will just have to wait. Ohh you are soooooo inCREDDDDDibly sssssexxxyyyyyyy..."

"RoZita - I mean Rose . . ." He took her by the wrists gently but firmly.

"Call me RoZita if you like. It sounds sooooo nice the way you say it…"

As she threw herself at him once more, Ahmed was nearly strangled in her embrace, taken aback. His innocent RoZita suddenly behaving like Mah-Doh-Nah? And what was he going to do now?

It was then that he saw Elena coming out of the cave with a quiver of arrows and a bow, and a rifle. And he had an inspiration.

"RoZita," he said, when he could get his mouth off hers, "if you do not let me go, that woman will kill me."

Rose pulled away abruptly and whirled around to see Elena standing there staring at them with the weapons.

"Don't you dare touch him," Rose said, standing before him to shield him from possible attack. "If you want to kill him, you'll have to kill me first."

"Well, if you two are not going to help me, I shall just have to go myself," Elena said with her dark eyes full of angry sparks. With that she tossed down the weapons and mounted Tornado once more, dug her booted heels into his black flanks, and tore off down the road.

"We will have to go after her," Ahmed said, breaking away from his would-be seductress. "We have no time for a plan."

He went to untie Fezeek, and the wind blew the scent away from RoZita. She hid her face in both hands.

"What in the WORLD came over me?" she wailed through her fingers. "I've NEVER acted that way in my entire LIFE. I mean, I've done a few crazy things but that really takes the ol' cakeroo! I can never look you in the face again!"

"Dear RoZita, it is not your fault." He stood behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders, after making sure the breeze was blowing the scent away from her. "It is this magic perfume. The magician said it would make you believe anything I told you. I think he did say it would have, ah, certain side effects, but I am afraid I was not paying close attention. If you will pardon me a minute, I will wipe it off."

"Don't," RoZita said, turning around. "See, I'm controlling myself very nicely even though I'm looking right at you? I promise not to behave like a whacko sleazebag any more."

"Have you ever ridden a camel?" he said with a smile that quirked his mouth up on one side in an endearing way.

"No, but there's a first time for everything, right?"

"You are a brave young woman," Ahmed said with sweet approval that made her feel much better. He spoke to Fezeek in Arabic, at which the beast knelt down on the ground.

"That is so cool," RoZita said almost to herself as Ahmed mounted and motioned for her to climb up behind him. "Just like Lawrence of Arabia."

"Oh my God, what a dangerous height!" she thought as the camel stood up. She laid her arms around Ahmed's slim waist. Chills of excitement shook her as the camel broke into a gallop. She almost yelled "Yippeeeeeee!" but decided that would not be very ladylike or sophisticated.

Since camels can outrun horses, they soon overtook Elena and Tornado. Elena didn't slow down, however. Horse and camel tore down the narrow dirt road, and Ahmed got swiped by branches until RoZita grabbed his scimitar and sliced at them so they would not put his eyes out.

"Take that!" she yelled at each branch as she hacked at it. She was enjoying herself. The feel of his perfectly shaped rear against her inner thighs did not lessen her pleasure a bit. She wanted to run a hand over the muscles of his forearms, then insert it into the open neck of his shirt and touch his chest hair, remembering how his lips had felt against hers. "If this is a dream, I don't want to wake up," she told herself.

Tornado turned sharply around a steep curve and Fezeek nearly ran off the road but managed to stay on it. The thundering of the eight hooves was nearly deafening.

Suddenly a shot rang out…


	6. Little Willy

~Chapter 6~

Tornado reared up, pitching his rider into the air. Elena was flung backwards into the road and the frightened camel barely missed her. None of them even noticed an elderly and slightly tipsy-looking man on a mule who'd halted at a fork in the road at the noise, and just sat watching in open-mouthed consternation.

Fezeek tore down the road as though a legion of Tartars were after him, his riders frantically trying to hold on. Elena picked herself up, not seriously hurt but badly shaken, and ran in the direction of Tornado, who was still rearing and bucking.

RoZita clung to Ahmed as tightly as she could, terrified, hiding her face against his back. He knew he would not be able to hold on much longer, not with her hanging on to him. She had dropped his scimitar also, and what was he to do without it?

Finally Fezeek ran toward a low tree that knocked his riders into the dust. The girl gave a shriek, still clinging to Ahmed. The camel ran on.

"He will exhaust himself soon, and come back to us," Ahmed said after a long moment during which they clung to each other trembling. Are you all right, RoZita?"

I don't know," she stammered. Her teeth chattered.

"What was that terrible noise? It was like thunder, and yet not like thunder. I have never heard anything like it." "G-Gunshot," she said, then buried her face against his chest, where it showed through the V-neck of his white shirt. The chest hairs were damp against her cheek. She could feel him shaking all over.

"Are YOU hurt?" she asked him, looking up. His face looked pale and the scratch scars stood out. There was a large scrape on his cheek and she wanted to kiss it.

"I think not badly," he said, then tried to sit up. He helped her sit up also. They could hear Tornado now. Elena had caught hold of his reins and had managed to avoid his huge hooves.

Ahmed tried to stand up, then nearly fell over again, saying "Ow!" RoZita caught and steadied him.

"You ARE hurt. Is it your leg?"

"I have injured my ankle a little. I do not think it is serious. Come, we must help her."

He started in Elena's direction, limping. RoZita put an arm around him telling him to lean on her. He put an arm across her shoulders and she laid her free hand on his forearm.

"Are you sure you are not hurt?" he asked her in his soft voice.

"Not a bit, my angel," she said in a sensuous purr - the magical scent was beginning to work on her once more. She tried to fight it, but she was remembering the feel of his lips on hers, and now his weight was leaning against her and she could not help but imagine it would be like to have him lying on top of her. He had many scratches now, and before she could stop herself she kissed one on his neck, then on his ear. Ohhh the skin of his ear was so soft…

"Are you sure you don't want to peel the tomato?" she whispered. She recalled an old Beatles song. "Why don't we do it in the road? No one will be watching, and even if they are, so what? We'll give 'em something to write home to mama about. . . ."

"RoZita, there is no time. This is an emergency situation." Gently he tried to push her away, then broke away, in spite of his hurt ankle. He seized Tornado's reins and began talking to the frightened horse until it finally stood still, then he stood stroking the animal's muzzle. Elena watched in wonder. He looked and sounded so like Alejandro.

And once more she could smell the scent also.

She stepped closer to Ahmed and touched his arm, then came and pressed her whole body against his. Her hand caressed his chest hair.

"Oh Alejandro I missed you so much!" she moaned. "Why didn't you come? I was soooo worried about you!"

She tried to kiss him but carefully he pushed her away saying, "Madame Elena, please come to your senses! I am not Alejandro! Look here, I have the scars, remember?"

She looked in wonder at him, shook her head and whispered, "Oh my god, excuse me, but we must find him!"

RoZita found the fallen scimitar. A glimmer of sunlight on the blade revealed it to her in some sagebrush.

"Unhand him, you brazen hussy," she hissed, brandishing the blade at Elena. "How dare you?"

Ahmed easily disarmed RoZita of the scimitar. "Enough of that," he said sternly, wishing he had wiped off the scent while he had the chance. "We must have a plan."

Just then they heard more hoofbeats. It was Fezeek, returning and looking a bit haughty. Ahmed smiled, then handed Tornado's reins back to Elena.

"How well do you know this countryside?" he asked her.

"Not well," she said. "I have lived in Spain nearly all my life, and have been here only a few months. I told you of a band of smugglers and cutthroats who…Look!"

She picked up a black bandanna lying in the road. It had a design of skulls printed on it. She looked at it in horror.

"Once in the market place I saw a man wearing this, sitting at an open-air cantina," she gasped. "He had tattoos all over his head and arms. I thought him to be a pirate or something. He had the most evil eyes I have ever seen…" She threw down the bandanna as though it had burned her hand, then looked with terrified eyes at Ahmed. "What will we do?"

Ahmed looked at Fezeek for a long moment. Then he reached over and took one of the large bags hanging from the camel's side. Fortunately it had been tied on very firmly.

"I have an idea." He handed the bag to RoZita. "This was for you. Both of you must put these things on. Look.." He began pulling things out of the bag. Two dresses of embroidered thin silk, one of them gold with black and scarlet patterns; this he handed to Elena. The other was turquoise with silver and purple sunbursts; he gave it to RoZita. Then sashes, one black, one silver. Gold and copper bracelets, sandals of beautifully tooled leather, transparent veils for the head and jeweled bands to hold them on, rings, earrings, necklaces. And face paint and perfume and combs, brushes, hand mirrors, body lotions and creams.

"For me?" RoZita looked at him in sheer wonder.

"Yes," he said looking a little shy. He led the women to a small wooded area out of sight of the road, then looked away waving a hand at them. "You two must put them on, then I will tell you my plan. I will turn away now and do my own part."

The two young women looked away from each other and began to change. RoZita could hardly believe it: all these lovely things for her?

"It was the scent," she heard Elena say. "It made me crazy. I did not know what I was doing."

"I know," RoZita said. She dressed herself, then turned and helped Elena with her veil. Then she opened the ivory box containing the cosmetics. A small pot of rouge, skin whitener, eyeliner, eye shadow. "Max Factor it ain't," she said softly, then dabbed on some cheek and lip color and studied the effect in the mirror. "Does this make me look slutty?"

"I think that is the idea," Elena said. "He is using us to lure the smugglers into a trap."

RoZita tried applying the eyeliner, but her hand shook too much. "I'm scared," she confessed. "This sucks…I mean, I just don't…like this."

"I hate it," Elena declared through clenched teeth. "But I will risk anything for my Alejandro."

"I've lead a very sheltered life. Time-traveling to rescue Zorro is just a little out of my experience, you know?"

Ahmed called to them, "Ladies, are you ready yet?"

"I think so, but for this stuff here," RoZita said. "We can't seem to get it on."

Ahmed stepped from behind the bushes and she saw he was all in white, a headdress banded with gold, and long white robes.

"Perhaps I can help," he said. He took the eyeliner and applied it to her and Elena with deft, quick strokes. Then the eyelid color.

"You are both afraid," he said as he put away the cosmetics. "I can see it in your eyes. RoZita, I am sorry with all my heart I brought you to this. Perhaps you should not get involved-you should take cover."

"I want to be involved," RoZita declared. "I'm NOT afraid." She knew she was fooling no one. But she did want to be involved. For the first time in her life something big was happening to her.

"My dear, I was once as you are now," Ahmed said with a smile of approval and sympathy. "If I had not been in a dangerous situation, I would probably have gone through my life passive and ordinary, insignificant. My life took on meaning from the dangers, I learned courage and faith and respect for those from different worlds. I became a man. But I do not want you to pass those dangers. I would rather you became a woman by learning from the acts of others."

"Well, this is all very profound, but it is not getting us any closer to Alejandro," Elena said. "He may be getting killed while we stand around discussing the mysteries of the universe. What do we do now?"

"We must surprise and trap them," Ahmed said. "Here is my plan…"

~O~O~

About ten minutes later he was kneeling high on a rocky ledge gripping a sapling and looking downward, trying not to feel dizzy.

"I can see something," he called down to the women. "It looks like an encampment. I can see a fire burning and one or two men."

"Not a very strategic location," RoZita commented. "Guess they aren't afraid of anybody." Ahmed climbed down the ledge with some difficulty.

"I saw a man with a long pointed thing wedged between two boulders," he reported as he stepped down with a sigh of relief onto solid ground. He still did not care for heights at all. "And I do not wish to alarm anyone, but I saw a dead body below. I - Madame Elena…"

Elena had clapped two hands to her mouth to hold back a scream.

"What was the body like?" she managed to gasp.

"He looked nothing like me," Ahmed said. She closed her eyes and crossed herself.

"How are we going to get past the lookout?" she said.

"I have an idea," RoZita said suddenly. "Point him out to me."

"RoZita, you cannot try to lure him out," Ahmed protested. "It is too dangerous. I -"

"He won't see me. Just point out where he's hiding."

She slipped behind some bushes and trees until she was within shouting distance of the lookout man, then ducked behind a large boulder.

"What does she think she is doing?" Elena whispered to Ahmed.

"I do not know...you can use that shooting thing?"

"Of course." She drew out her pistol from where she had hidden in her sash. Then a strange noise rang out from RoZita's direction. A weird, high birdlike sound that neither Elena nor Ahmed recognized.

She made the noise again, a little more softly. Then she detected a slight movement from the boulders above, and saw the end of a rifle. Her heart fluttered and her knees felt slightly wobbly. But she made the turkey gobble once more, and waited. And again. Then waited.

Cochino peered from the boulder cautiously. All he could see was the body of the unfortunate peasant he had shot a while ago. But he heard the turkey call. He pictured wild turkey meat with jalapeños and his mouth began to water. He could just about see the bird out there, since the loco-weed he had been smoking had not totally worn off.

Little by little he crept out of his hiding place, aiming his rifle in the direction of the noise. He heard it again, much softer this time. Raising his rifle, he took aim but did not fire. He was much more adept at stealing food than at stalking it. But he thought how impressed the others would be if he should return to the lair with such a prize. They probably thought he was pretty stupid, and laughed at him behind his back. Well, they would think much more of him after this….

RoZita chuckled silently as she watched the Mexican creep out. He wasn't even going in the right direction, misled by echoes. Once more she made the noise. He straightened, cocking the rifle, and took aim where he thought the noise was coming from.

Then she heard a deafening crack and saw him fall. Her laughter died away. Everything whirled in front of her. She caught hold of a branch to keep from falling. Next thing she knew Ahmed was holding her and gently slapping her cheeks.

"RoZita," he said, "are you all right?"

"I think so…is he dead?"

"He is. You did wonderfully. What was that sound?"

"Wild turkey. My grandfather on my dad's side was a turkey hunter, and he'd make that noise. He died when I was just a little kid but I couldn't forget that noise…He's really dead? The guard guy, I mean?"

"Yes," Elena said looking at her smoking pistol as though she didn't quite recognize it. "I've never killed anyone before."

"He was a criminal," Ahmed said gently. "I imagine he has killed many. But I understand your feelings. It is no small matter to take a life, even a bad and wretched one."

"I never helped kill anybody before either," RoZita said. "I'm kinda freaked."

Ahmed went to body of Cochino and picked up his rifle. "This is a gun also?" he said.

"Yes," Elena said. "You had better carry it even if you don't know how to use it."

"Show me how it is done," he said. Elena took it and raised it to her shoulder. She made a strange picture in that oriental get-up, holding the rifle.

"Lay your cheek on this cheek rest and peer through the sight," she said. "Find your target and draw a bead, and…"

She bent to lift a pouch of cartridges from the dead Mexican. The body lay face down but the head was turned to one side, so RoZita could see blood oozing out of the mouth, nose and ears, as well as from the wound between his shoulders, and the eye she could see was open. The others did not seem to notice, as Elena continued to instruct Ahmed. She loaded a bullet into the breech of the rifle, drew a bead on a tree branch and shot it off.

RoZita went off by herself to be sick.

Little Willy Love was bored. After his papa left to take the steer to the butcher and Pepa shooed him out of the kitchen, he followed his mother and his nursemaid around until they finally sent him outside. Which was just what he wanted, only he couldn't just ask permission to go out without getting on everyone's nerves first. Outside, he amused himself by throwing pebbles at the chickens, then he lay down mashing ants with his thumb for a while. Then he tried to see if he could pee up into a bird's nest. He couldn't, and that frustrated him so that he went out to pester Pancho, the ranch hand.

He found the Mexican cleaning out the stables and singing a ballad about El Zorro. Willy didn't know much about his Uncle Harrison. His mother had told him he had been killed by Zorro, but she wouldn't tell him any more than that.

He climbed up on a rail to watch Pancho work.

"If I was a horse, you know what I'd do?" Willy said. "I'd kick you in the rear end and knock you inside out."

Pancho's response was to start another verse of his ballad. He sometimes pretended not to understand English, but Willy knew he could.

"You'd look pretty funny with your innards all sticking out," Willy said. "Don't you think so?"

Pancho made as if to toss the contents of his shovel at Willy, who stuck his tongue out.

"You think you're funny, don't you?" the boy said crossing his arms over his fat belly. "Tell me about Zorro," he said bossily.

Pancho stopped singing. "You know about Zorro," he said. "He is the brave champion of the peasants. He save them from the wicked governor of California."

"My papa says he was a thief," Willy said scratching himself between the legs. "He wore a mask cuz he was real ugly and had warts and a great big ol' nose. And he didn't save the people at the mine. Mama says that's just a fairy tale some dumb Mexicans made up. She says Zorro really killed the governor to marry his pretty daughter."

Pancho gave a snort and rolled up his eyes, looking a little like a horse himself.

"Is no fairy tale," he said. "And he is the handsomest fellow you ever want to see. And the governor's daughter is really the first Zorro's daughter and he steal her for his own. If you don't believe, is your business."

He turned his back and went back to shoveling out the stall.

"I think you're full of horse manure," Willy said, sniggering at his own wit. Pancho went back to singing his song.

"Luisa says you can do magic," Willy said a minute later. "Can you?" Luisa was his nursemaid, Pepa's and Pancho's daughter.

"If I do magic, I will make you disappear," was Pancho's reply.

Willy pouted. "Nobody likes me," he whined. Pancho didn't even bother to reply, he just finished shoveling out the stall and then went on to the next.

"I'm gonna run away," Willy grumbled. "It stinks around here. I'm gonna go have some adventures. I think I'll be Zorro myself. You'll see. I'm gonna be a hero and you won't dare mess with me any more."

He picked up a horsewhip hanging from the wall nearby and considered popping it at Pancho. Instead, he just quietly left the stable. It wasn't until after he left that he began snapping the whip all over the place.

"Take that! And that!" he yelled. Then he popped it at a barn cat and sent her scurrying away, and he laughed. "I'm leaving! Just watch me!"

He decided he would run away for real. No use going back to that house with nobody there but fat old women who didn't want him around.

He struck out down the road, snapping the whip at the tall grass by the side, at a turtle he saw, at dragonflies, anything that moved, until he heard a wagon coming. At first he thought it was his papa until he saw it was just some Mexican. He hid behind a tree until the mule-drawn wagon passed, then he slipped out and climbed up unnoticed onto the back of the wagon and found it was full of fruit. Willy began stuffing his face, scrunching down between the baskets. Before long, the rocking motion of the wagon started making him sleepy, and he dozed off, the sun burning down onto his face.

When he woke up he found the Mexican shaking him by the arm and yelling something at him in Spanish.

"Chinga tu madre," Willy snapped, jerking his arm away and trying to think where he was. He didn't know what that meant, but the Mexican looked at him with fury in his beady black eyes and smacked Willy across the face. Willy howled. The Mexican picked him up and tossed him out of the wagon. The boy could see he was no peasant like he'd thought at first. He looked more like a bandit.

"I'm gonna tell my-" Then Willy halted as he saw a huge man with a tattooed, bald head grinning down at him.

"What ho! A nipper!" the man said in a raspy voice, grabbing the boy roughly by the arm. "Where ye come from, hey? What the bloody hell ye doin' 'ere, nipper?"

Willy opened his mouth to yell but no sound came out. He knew who this was. Sometimes when Pepa or Luisa got really exasperated they would tell him, "If you don't behave, Scourge will come get you."

A little ways off, he could see another man tied to a tree.


	7. Morgana and Zaîda

~Chapter 7~

"You look like you could use a little drink, amigo," Carnal Love said, dashing his cup of rum in Alejandro's face just as he was about to lose consciousness once more. Alejandro cried out as the liquor boiled into his wounds. Carnal snickered, then started as he heard a shot from Cochino's direction.

Charlie Black Goose a.k.a. Butt Sniffin' Dog, chuckled, saying, "Our brave lookout has picked off an intruder Maybe the sheriff?"

"Well, he's good for somethin' at least," laughed Carnal Love. "I'm going out to fetch the fair Lady Elena now, fellas. Have your little fun with El Zorro here, but keep him alive, you hear? He's mine. I'm gonna fetch her ladyship over here and let him have the fun of watching me have a little tussle with her before I finish him off. Maybe some of the rest of you could even get in on it if you behave yourselves. Where's that big lug of a pirate got off to?"

"Went to piss," Charlie said, belching, "but I'll give him your message."

"When did that tattooed sea-dog get so all-fired modest?" laughed Love. With that he set down the jug of rum, turned and went to untie his horse, then mounted with a jaunty wave to the others.

Nestrelda sat sullenly in the mouth of the cave, rubbing her forehead where Alejandro had rammed it with his and watching Love go.

Carnal Love whistled softly as he rode along the dirt road, then halted as he heard what sounded like female voices. They seemed to be coming from the woods, but it was hard to tell what direction out here. He couldn't hear what they were saying, just the sound of them, soft and rather melodious, and a little nervous giggle from one of them. He slowed down wondering if they were alone out there…he could even smell perfume. Mmmm, nice…then he resumed his pace. No time for that now. No gal could hold a candle to Señorita Montero anyway.

He couldn't resist looking over his shoulder, just the same. He couldn't see anything though, just…whoa...what looked like the white flank of a horse, or something…but no time. The lovely Elena was at the waterfall waiting for her man. She was fixin' to get the surprise of her life.

Further along the road, something else puzzled him: fresh droppings in the ruts. He was a rancher and he knew his droppings, and these didn't look like any he had ever seen before. Neither horse, nor cow, nor mule, nor donkey, nor sheep, nor goat, nor dog, nor deer, nor pig.

"Maybe a elephant's been this way, what?" He tried for a joking tone to his horse. "Circus comin' to town maybe?"

But it was kind of unnerving. He didn't like the unfamiliar. However, the thought of Elena's eyes, cheekbones, lips, skin, hair, and body spurred him on, and he slapped the reins down on his horse and went on his way.

~O~O~

RoZita wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and sat on a rock to collect herself. I've done murder, she thought giddily. I helped do it, anyway, which amounts to the same thing…I guess I am a warrior now. Who would ever have thought it? Why in the world did he call me a warrior princess? Who is he anyway? Surely I AM dreaming…

She fingered her bracelets, watching Ahmed and Elena with the rifle. They seemed to have forgotten her. She tried vainly to remember what she had been doing prior to waking up to see him standing above her in his, uh, natural state. Her bosom heaved at the memory. She thought of her job at the Census Bureau, of the boyfriend she had broken up with a year before…she leaned her head down between her knees as a dizzy spell came over her once more. Some warrior princess, she told herself…

"RoZita, are you all right?" she heard Ahmed's voice ask. His hands pressed her shoulders and there was that scent again. The sheer beauty of him overwhelmed her once more. She would have thrown herself into his arms but for the firmness of his hands holding her off.

"I'm fine," she said, reaching up to touch his cheek. The hardness of the cheekbone and the softness of the skin covering it made her ache a little inside. She almost said, "I love you," but he gently pulled her to her feet.

"I am afraid that woman will go off by herself if we linger," he said. "I have never seen anyone so determined."

RoZita looked over at Elena with the rifle. "OK, let's go. I'll go with her, you'd better fetch Clyde-I mean, Fezeek."

Ahmed untied the camel from the tree to which he had been tethered. Then he led the beast by the reins and took the rifle from Elena and carried it under his robe.

RoZita went to walk beside Elena. Elena looked at her with an expression of wonder and a new respect in her dark eyes.

"You really did well," she said softly.

"Thanks," RoZita said shyly without looking up at the taller woman.

"Are you still frightened?" Elena asked.

"Yes," RoZita admitted.

"This really is wonderful of you," Elena said. "You don't even know me and you certainly don't know Alejandro, and yet you are risking your life to help me rescue him. If you two had let me go running off by myself the way I did, I would surely have been killed. Just why ARE you doing this? It's not as if you owe me anything."

"I don't know. I've daydreamed about being a hero now and then - everybody has, I guess - but I never really supposed I would actually DO it. I've just lived an uninteresting life where nothing real ever happened to me. So I suppose I'm not truly real, if you know what I mean. Because I never did anything that MADE me real. But now a man is dead because of something I did and I'm feeling pretty damn real at the moment. I guess there's no turning back. I have to go through with this. Otherwise his death won't make any sense and I'll just continue being unreal as I was before, counting people I never see and getting paid to fill up space. And if I do that, I'll lose Ahmed. He won't be real either and he'll vanish. It will be as if he had never existed. I think he was sent to make me real and so there's no going back."

RoZita paused for breath. It was the longest speech she had ever made and she could hardly believe the way it had just flowed out of her.

"I see," Elena said. "I...look!"

The two young women paused to see an outcropping of stone and some moving figures.

"It's...them?" RoZita thought her heart would stop beating. She thought of turning and going back to being unreal as quickly as she ever could. She put a hand to her throat as if to pull off the wire noose of terror constricting it, and stood frozen. Then she felt Elena's arm around her.

"You are not going to faint, are you?" There was no scorn in Elena's voice, only concern. RoZita could not answer right away, however.

Finally she said raspily, "I feel like I'm looking through the gate of hell. Into the face of pure evil." She knew she was being melodramatic but couldn't help herself.

"Nonsense," Elena said, but she sounded as though she were trying to convince herself as well. "It's only a den of thieves. Hold on to my arm."

RoZita looked back at Ahmed, several yards behind them, leading the white camel. "What does he plan to do anyway?"

"We are to lure them toward him with our seductive wiles. Remember, I am Morgana and you are - Zaîda."

"I did play a mermaid once in a local production of Peter Pan. But all I had to do was sit on a rock and comb my hair and sing. But I imagine this will involve a bit more?"

"You can sing? Let's sing then!" Elena said. "In Spain there was a band of Moorish gypsies who had an encampment in the hills near where I lived. Sometimes it could get dull at the hacienda, so I would sneak away and ride off to the hills to visit with them. They always seemed to be having a good time. Often they would sing like this..."

She began singing a song in a strange language, with a definite Arabian flavor to the melody. She had a lovely voice. RoZita, being musical, caught on quickly. She sang the phrases after Elena, then in harmony with her, and some of her fear seeped away. They walked arm in arm, singing, coyly pushing back strands of hair and swaying their hips.

"Mmmmmm...where did you ladies come from?"

They started. A man who looked to be part Indian emerged from a stand of trees. He wore a buckskin shirt and pants with a red bandanna tied around his neck. He had a hideous scar across his forehead, probably the result of a knife fight, and his small crinkly eyes were an odd color against his coppery brown skin, almost yellow, like those of a mountain lion. Or maybe more like a rattlesnake.

Elena made a gasp, putting a hand to her mouth. Then she crossed her hands on her bosom in a sweet maidenly manner.

"Can you help us?" she pleaded softly. "We are traveling with a carnival and have lost our way. Is there anyone who can point us in the direction of the road leading into town?" She gave him a radiant smile, fingering a lock of her long black hair.

Charlie Black Goose looked over the women's curvy bodies in their oriental garb with undisguised lust in his snake eyes.

"I might be able to do that thing," he said, moving closer so that RoZita could smell him. It was not exactly a scent that was going to make her throw herself at HIM. She could have almost sworn she could see fangs emerging from his mouth as he spoke. "So...what will you lovely ladies give me in return?"

Elena gave a coy giggle and nudged RoZita.

"Ooooo, listen to him!" she squeaked. "Do you hear what he is saying? Zaîda, what shall we give him?"

RoZita suddenly snapped into action. Perhaps it was the wind change once more that blew Ahmed's scent in her direction and Charlie's stink away.

"What WON'T we give him?" she purred, turning a little pirouette, flicking her veil at him to waft her perfume his way. She could have sworn she heard him growl. She sang:

Wouldn't ya like to have fun, fun, fun

Wouldn't ya like to have laughs, laughs, laughs

I can show you a (snap, snap) good time,

Let me show you a (snap, snap) good time..."

She snapped her fingers and did a bump and grind motion followed by a shimmy. Elena stared at her in amazement.

Butt Sniffin' Dog was fairly drooling. RoZita tried not to look at the bulge in his pants.

"Zaîda, that's enough!" Elena said in a little mock-petulant voice, pinching her arm. RoZita paused with a little pout. "Come this way, ah…"

"You may call me Charlie, Missy. My mama was a comely Apache maiden, and my sire was a dashing British seaman who fell in love with her at first sight, but was slain by her jealous…suitor…in a most unpleasant manner."

"Oh…how romantic," RoZita sighed. "But sad."

"I was not expecting such a charming gentleman to come to our aid," Elena simpered. "I was a little bit frightened that there might be bad men about. But I guess we have nothing to fear now?" She fluttered her long eyelashes at the heavily built half-breed.

"You gals come this way," he said with a tone that was meant to suggest gallantry but exuded nothing but pure animal lechery. Each girl took the arm he offered to them, Elena on his left, RoZita on his right, and they giggled and swayed as they listened to him go on about what he would like to do with them.

"Do you gals like to do three at a time?" he asked.

RoZita wasn't sure what he meant at first, then Elena said, "But of course," and she caught on. Her stomach knotted up a little.

"I am Morgana and this is Zaîda," Elena lisped. "We are from the land of Arabia. You simply must come see the show. We dance with snakes and float in the air. And after that...heheheehe...ooooooo..."

"I do the dance of the Seven Veils," RoZita murmured. "But you know what? I only wear six."

"LISTEN to her!" Elena squealed. "Such a baaaaaaaad girl! What am I to DO with her?"

"You do things with her?" Charlie said with a wink.

"Umm," Elena cast down her eyes demurely, "only when there are no strong, handsome men around. Then sometimes...well...a girl can only turn to her best friend for comfort."

"I do like to see a girl comfort her best friend," Charlie said in almost a growl. RoZita felt her stomach turn over again. "It is a fair and lovely sight. Two rosebuds that kiss each other on the same bush."

"How poetic," RoZita gasped, wondering where Ahmed was now. She could hardly wait to deliver this creep into his hands.

"Oh yes..." Elena sighed. "Ro-ah-Zaîda, I feel a sorrow deep in my soul. I pray you give me the comfort that only a bosom friend may give."

"Oh yesssss," Charlie rasped. "I wanna see two rosebuds kiss on the same vine."

"You stand here then," Elena instructed him, directing him to a clump of bushes, "and Zaîda and I will comfort each other for you here where the sun will lend us his light."

"Yes, yes..." Charlie stood and actually wiped his chin with the back of his hand, his panther eyes gleaming maniacally.

Elena led RoZ into the clearing whispering, "Play along." She removed RoZita's veil very slowly from her head and ran her fingers through her hair. Then she turned RoZita's face up to hers and kissed her full on the lips.

RoZita had never been kissed by a woman before but she did her best to return the kiss and seem to relish it. It was not as difficult as she would have thought.

Now she could hear Charlie breathing raspily and out of the corner of her eye she could see him rubbing himself.

And then she saw Ahmed's white robes in the bushes behind him, the silver blade of his scimitar raised high.


	8. Scourge

~Chapter 8~

"I am Zaîda and this is Morgana, and she is very sad," said RoZita running her hand over the prickly brown arm and trying not to shudder, thinking it felt just like a cactus. "Her cobra died yesterday and she lost her favorite nose ring and her lover has tonsillitis so he can't give her any kisses today. Would you like to watch me comfort her?"

"Oh yessssss...oh babyyyyyy..."

"Come then, sweet Morgana…"

_HACK!_

Elena ran a finger down the large crooked nose. "Darling, it's soooo hot. I'm hot. Are you hot?"

_HACK!_

"I do lovvvve a bad boy," RoZita purred, rubbing her head catlike against the bony shoulder. "And so does Morgana. Sweetie, what are we gonna do with such a baaaaad, _baaaaad_ boy?"

"We will have to punish him," pouted Elena, poking the other arm with a ringed forefinger. "You must come with us now so we can both punish you properly, you baaaaaad boy!"

_HACK!_

"How many is that?" Elena asked, wrinkling her nose at the bloodstains on Ahmed's white robe. The Arab looked down at the scarlet marks, then whipped off the outer garment and tossed it aside. RoZita looked away from the mutilated and gory bodies, hoping she would not be sick again.

"Seven," Ahmed said, then reached out to touch RoZita's arm. "Are you all right?"

"If anyone had ever told me someday I would be embracing a career as a serial killer," she gasped, "I - I guess I would have…gone straight out and bombed an old folks' home…or something."

"You are not a serial killer," Ahmed told her gently. "You are a warrior on a mission. I would give almost anything not to have involved you in this, but sometimes certain things must be done and bloodshed cannot be avoided, and innocence must be sacrificed to a greater good. Try to think of it in that way and it will not destroy you. And you have done wonderfully well. I am proud of you."

"How many more do you suppose there are?" Elena asked. It was weird how calm she sounded. "I have seen no sign of the tattooed pirate."

She turned slightly green at the very thought of Scourge.

~O~O~

"Look what I found here!" the pirate shouted. Alejandro looked as Scourge came forth dragging a small, very chubby, sandy-haired boy by the arm. The boy whimpered in protest. "A nipper stowed away on board! Arrr! What's we gonna do with 'im, hey? Shall we cook 'im for supper, what? Nice fat 'un! Ha ha ha!" He pinched the boy's plump cheek hard.

Alejandro could hardly believe his eyes. The little boy bore a strong resemblance to Carnal Love. If it hadn't been such a wild coincidence, he would have sworn this was his tormenter's son.

Nestrelda, who sat idly poking the remains of a campfire with a long stick, looked at Willy Love indifferently. He sniffled.

"I'm gonna tell my papa," he whined. "I wanna go home. And NOBODY better cook me!"

"Look at that!" Nestrelda exclaimed, jumping to her feet and pointing past Scourge's shoulder.

Alejandro looked. Two women were approaching in the distance, dressed in oriental costume. One of them looked a lot like Elena, from here. The other he did not recognize. She clung to the taller, darker, more beautiful woman's arm and seemed frightened.

Yes, the dark one was Elena. Alejandro could tell by her walk.

Scourge turned about, releasing the boy, and although Alejandro could not see the pirate's face it was plain that he was pleased at what he saw. Every muscle of his huge, brutal body was clearly at full attention.

Nothing was worse than being so helpless at such a time.

"Now there's a sightly pair o' wenches!" Scourge exclaimed, his enormous, hairy hands clenched on his hips. "And they're bloody comin' right this way, by me mother's eyes! What a fair sight!"

The two young women drew closer. Elena's eyes met Alejandro's but she gave no indication that she recognized him. Still, he could see the stricken expression in them. He understood that she had come in disguise to rescue him, but how was she to do that? And who was the other girl?

Scourge took a step in their direction, then halted. They came closer, hesitantly; whether their timidity was real or faked Alejandro could not tell. Willy gawked at them, sniffling. Nestrelda stood up, twirling one of her strings of beads nearly hard enough to break it and baring her teeth. Finally she marched over to them, elbowing Scourge out of her way.

"Who are you, and what you doing here?" she demanded.

Elena took a little step forward saying, "I am Morgana and this is Zaîda, and we are lost. We are with a carnival going into Los Angeles, but we got separated from our troupe and cannot find the road back. Can someone show us the way to town?"

She looked in a half-flirtatious way at Scourge. The other girl clearly looked terrified of the huge brute.

"Well now, I might be able to be of some assistance," he said with mock gallantry, stepping in front of Nestrelda. "So...ahem...would I be gettin' a little something in return for showin' you fair ladies the lay o' the land?"

Alejandro gritted his teeth, then hissed a little.

"Niño," he whispered. Willy snapped around to look at him. "Can you untie a knot?"

Willy came a bit closer. "Yes. Why?"

"If you can untie the rope in back," Alejandro whispered, "I will give you something very nice."

"What?" Willy halted. "What will you give me?"

"I'll tell you if you untie me. It's a surprise. But you must hurry." Alejandro looked to Elena, who had noticed the exchange between him and the boy, and was clearly now doing her best to keep the pirate and the gypsy distracted. He could see Zaîda baiting Nestrelda.

"Do you promise?" Willy said. "And will you take me home? I want out of this place and I want it NOW."

"Yes, yes, yes," Alejandro reminded himself not to sound too eager. He prayed that none of the others would appear. Where were they anyway? They seemed to have all disappeared. He was unarmed; if they were to suddenly appear and descend upon him, what would he do? It would be hard enough just with Scourge. And what would they do to the boy?

Willy hesitated, looking back at Scourge and Nestrelda, then approached timidly. Alejandro was beginning to sweat once more. Then finally the boy went around the back of the tree and started working the ropes.

"There's a million knots here," he complained, "and they're hard."

"I will give you something nicer than anything you ever saw," Alejandro said in his most seductive tones. "And I will take you home on my wonderful black horse, Tornado."

"Tornado? That is Zorro's horse," Willy said. "Are YOU Zorro? You can't be, you're all tied up."

"Um…no. But I can take you to meet the real Zorro."

Willy breathed hard working the knots. Alejandro felt a little faint, but held on.

"Will you show us the way back to town?" "Morgana" was saying. "We must be there because they will expect us to do our dance for the people."

"I do the dance of the seven veils," Zaîda" squeaked up at the pirate, "and I only wear six." She gave a shrill giggle and looked straight at Nestrelda. "We are much prettier than her, wouldn't you say? And we smell better too." She wrinkled her nose.

"Ahem," Scourge cleared his throat, "just now I be a trifle occupied, but soon I'll be pleased to accommodate sech a comely pair o' wenches. For the time bein' I cordially invite the two o' yez to set and have a little drink o' rum. Ye must be a wee tired after sech a long walk in this warm weather."

"Oh thank you but we MUST be going," Elena said. She tried not to look at Alejandro, feeling so sick inside at the sight of her beloved man tied to that tree, his bloody shirt hanging in shreds from his poor wounded body, his face puffy and discolored from the blows he had received. Fiercely she told herself to be strong, to flirt with this ugly pirate with his obscene tattoos and look as though she were enjoying herself, all for the sake of Alejandro. "We will be late for the show and our master will be VERY angry with us. You don't know what kind of bad things he does when we don't do his will…"

"There, I got this knot," Willy sounded a little surprised at himself. "But there's about a hundred more."

"You are a strong boy," Alejandro said. He felt very hot, and wondered if he had a fever. "I know you can get all the knots, because you are a strong boy and you could be a hero."

Willy huffed and puffed as he worked the second knot. Alejandro was nearly blinded by the sweat that seeped into his eyes.

Nestrelda appeared about to turn to look over her shoulder. RoZita quickly asked her, "Is it true that gypsies wear no underwear?"

"I have had just about enough of you, you white-face nothing," Nestrelda snapped. She walked right up to RoZita and raised a hand to slap her. RoZita pulled the dagger Ahmed had given her from her sash and pointed it at her.

"Nothing? I'm more of a something than YOU'LL ever be, Carmen or whatever the hell your name is," she declared.

"Is that so?" Nestrelda whipped out a dagger of her own from the bosom of her dirty blouse. "We will just see!"

Suddenly Elena pulled out a pistol from her sash.

"Stand back, both of you," she hissed. Scourge jumped back, startled. She aimed, cocked the pistol at him, and was about to fire when Nestrelda lunged at RoZita with her dagger. Elena shot at her instead. She missed but did scorch the gypsy's blouse. RoZita leaped forward and grabbed Nestrelda's wrist, wrenching the dagger from her hand, then tried to stab her, but the gypsy grabbed her arm with a surprisingly strong grip. Scourge grabbed Elena's arm and twisted it hard so that she dropped her pistol with a cry of pain. RoZita jabbed at his tattooed arm with the dagger. Blood spurted from a huge cut and he yelped, releasing Elena.

And Nestrelda could only gasp as another man who looked exactly like Alejandro stepped out of the brush with a rifle that looked exactly like Cochino's.

Alejandro knew he must be truly feverish, seeing his own face across the clearing. Willy had stopped working at the knots and was staring at the man.

"Is THAT the real Zorro?" he whispered. "He looks like you. But he's not wearing the right clothes."

"Yes," gasped Alejandro. "Hurry, please. He wants you to help us."

Ahmed cocked the rifle, aimed and squeezed the trigger. But he was unaccustomed to shooting and the weapon was so huge and heavy, he only managed to blast away a chunk of Scourge's left arm. The recoil knocked him flat on his back and the rifle bounced away from him. With a howl of pain and rage, Scourge drew his cutlass from his belt and dove after Ahmed.

Ahmed rolled away and grabbed his scimitar, then sprang to his feet, wincing at the pain in his shoulder. The brute lunged at him and the Arab stepped aside and tried to strike the cutlass out of the pirate's hand. Scourge stood a head taller than himself, his chest and shoulders twice as broad. Ahmed's only advantage was that he was quicker on his feet, more agile. He would have to depend on that to hold his own, and he was not sure it would be enough.

RoZita grabbed the pistol, which she had nearly forgotten about, from her belt, cocked it and aimed at Scourge. But the risk of hitting Ahmed was too great and she was as inexperienced at shooting as he. Elena dashed over to Alejandro with her dagger and frantically tried to cut him loose, pushing the boy out of her way. Nestrelda looked at her own fallen dagger as if to retrieve it but RoZita gave her a look that said, Don't you even think about it, pointing the pistol at her in imitation of Charlie's Angels.

Finally Elena managed to slice through the ropes and Alejandro staggered free. She nearly burst into tears at the sight of his wounds but instead she caught him as he nearly fell into her arms.

"Look!" Willy cried and they saw that Scourge had knocked the scimitar out of Ahmed's hand. Both the pirate's arms were bleeding heavily and it was a gruesome sight, but it wasn't stopping him at all. He raised his blade high in the air to cleave the Arab in two. RoZita fired then, striking the huge man in the belly, but it was a little like shooting a bear. All it did was enrage him further. However, it distracted him enough for Ahmed to recover his scimitar and he sliced at the pirate with all his strength, cutting a large slash down his half-bare chest. Scourge lunged at Ahmed and nearly ran him through, but Ahmed jumped aside so the blade only nicked him. Scourge stumbled forward, roaring like a bull. Ahmed kicked him in the rear so that the big man fell flat on his face, then dove at him, but Scourge rolled over and leaped, incredibly, to his feet. Suddenly he dropped his blade and grabbed for Ahmed, wrenching the scimitar out of his hand and throwing him to the ground. RoZita raised the pistol once more and fired, then felt something hard and heavy strike her in back of the head. She had forgotten Nestrelda, who had hurled a big stone at her.

Scourge jumped almost on top of Ahmed and twisted his arm behind his back, cackling in triumph. He drew out a knife and held it to Ahmed's throat. Then Alejandro tossed the contents of one of the jugs of rum all over Scourge's back. The pirate released the Arab and leaped to his feet, bellowing in pain and outrage as the liquor burned into his wounds. Then Alejandro grabbed the stick with which Nestrelda had been poking the fire, and having dipped it into the rum, lit it into the smoldering campfire, and tossed it like a spear at Scourge, who went up in flames.

He shrieked like a demon from the bowels of hell, jumping and flailing, whirling and staggering every which way. The women stared in horror. Ahmed saw RoZita's pistol, which she had dropped when Nestrelda hit her, grabbed it, cocked it and fired. He was luckier this time and struck the pirate in the head. The giant fireball fell twitching, then lay still, small flames still licking at what remained of his clothing. The smell of his roasted, blackened flesh was sickening.

Nestrelda tried to scramble away but Elena was too quick for her. She grabbed the gypsy by one of her long braids, saying, "You are not going anywhere, 'manita!" Alejandro staggered toward the pirate and stood looking down at the dead man for a long moment. Ahmed rushed to RoZita, who was on her knees bleeding from a wound in the back of her head. Then he looked up at Alejandro, who sank to his knees also.


	9. Nestrelda

~Chapter 9~

Ahmed lifted and carried Alejandro over to the small cave which smelled of horses and contained many small pallets, and laid him down on the nearest one. Elena tied Nestrelda, none too gently, to the nearly dead tree where Alejandro had been tied, persuading her to cooperate with the help of her pistol. As she bound Nestrelda's hands, the gypsy called her a name that was unspeakable in any language and spat at her. Elena raised a hand to strike her, then stopped herself.

"I would gladly slap you all the way to hell, you daughter of Beelzebub," she said, her beautiful face as cold and white as the moon, "but I am not like you. I am not one to do violence to people who are tied up, even when they are the spawn of demons."

Alejandro held onto Ahmed for a moment as the Arab set him down, shuddering, and Ahmed spoke to him gently, as he would to a frightened horse. He could hardly help noticing how warm Alejandro was.

Finally Ahmed whispered, "Thank you for saving my life." Alejandro nodded and Ahmed laid him on his side, feeling him for broken bones, a little sickened at the damage he saw. Whip marks back and front, a burn or two, bruises and deep scratches, lacerations, a couple of small puncture wounds. And in spite of it all he could still see the resemblance between Alejandro and himself. It was truly uncanny. Of all the strange things that had happened today, this was the strangest!

Elena ran to Alejandro, weeping, and threw herself down beside him. Ahmed rose and went to see about RoZita, who was now standing near the mouth of the cave. She still seemed stunned.

"Are you all right?" he asked her. "Let me see." He lifted her bloody hair in back to examine the wound. She winced a little but made no sound. "Does it hurt much?" he asked her.

"I can hardly feel it," she said. She was shaking all over. "Do you think he'll be OK? I think he has a high fever. We need to get him some cold water. He's liable to get dehydrated without it, and rum would only make him worse."

"I do not know," Ahmed said looking down at Alejandro, whom he could hardly see now for Elena leaning over him. "He is in a bad way. Why don't you sit down with them while I go to get some medicine supplies."

He led her into the cave with an arm around her and guided her to another of the pallets. Then he found a much larger blanket, probably Scourge's, judging from the size. Willy followed him to the body of the pirate, over which flies were beginning to congregate.

"Are you going to bury him?" Willy asked, wrinkling his snub nose.

"No. I am not strong enough to move him. All I can do is cover him."

"He stinks. And he's got bugs all over him."

"Yes." Ahmed covered the huge charred bloody body, trying not to be sick. Every muscle in his own body ached, especially his arm where Scourge had twisted it. If not for Alejandro, the brute would have broken it…just before cutting his throat.

"I hate him," Willy said. "He hurt me. When he grabbed my arm and started yanking me along. I'm glad he's dead." His lower lip quivered a little.

"He was a very bad man," Ahmed said with an inward shudder, thinking he had never seen anything that looked more monstrous, not even the Wendol. "He enjoyed hurting people. It was fun to him."

"Are you the real Zorro?" Willy asked. Ahmed looked at him, startled. He said you were," Willy explained, looking toward the small cave.

"He has a fever, perhaps he was delirious when he said that and did not know what he was saying. But he is the real Zorro."

"But you look like him. Are you his twin brother?"

"Perhaps." Ahmed decided that would be easier than explaining the truth to the boy. "Come with me to see my camel."

Willy followed him to where Fezeek was tied to a tree, nibbling at leaves. Ahmed untied him and spoke Arabic, so that the camel sank to his knees. Ahmed put Willy up on his hump and then climbed up in front of him, instructing him to hold on. They rode back to the overhang where they dismounted and tethered Fezeek to another tree. Then Ahmed took a bag hanging from the animal's saddle. Willy looked over at Nestrelda, who was staring at the camel in disbelief.

"I hate her too," Willy said, plenty loud enough for the gypsy to hear. "She is a bitch." He stooped and picked up a rock to throw at her. Ahmed grabbed his wrist and made him drop the stone.

"You must never say that word about any woman, Willy," he said sternly. "Women are to be respected always. They are the source of all human life, including your own."

Willy stared at him uncomprehendingly, then pouted.

"I want to go home. He promised to take me."

"We cannot take you just now, Willy. Later we will find a way to take you home. But just now it is impossible."

"But he promised me. And I want to go."

"I understand, my child. But he was ill when he said it. Sometimes when people are ill they do not know what they are saying. He is more ill now, and may die. Please try to think of someone besides yourself for a while, Willy."

The boy gave him the goggle-eyed stare of someone who has just been presented with a totally foreign concept.

But he said nothing. He followed the Arab into the small cave, where Ahmed opened the bag and took out several bottles and jars. He pulled the stoppers of several, and settled on one, which he handed to Elena.

"This is salve made from cactus and balm and aloe. Put that on his wounds," he said. Turning to RoZita, he said, "Let me examine that cut once more."

He put something on it that stung at first but began to soothe after a minute or two. Gently he stroked her hair over the cut. She sniffled a little, then looked at Alejandro with concern.

"We should get him near some cold water," she said. "We need to get his fever down. Elena, do you know if there is a body of cold water nearby?"

"I am unfamiliar with this area," Elena said as she doctored the whip marks on his back. "The only stream I know of is near where we started - at our waterfall."

"We should get him there," RoZita said. "It could be dangerous here - that other man he was talking about may come back here. But how can we? He can't ride, can he?"

"Perhaps Ahmed could hold him up on the camel, and you and the boy could ride with me on Tornado. But what do we do with her? We can hardly leave her here, she may escape, and she could be dangerous."

"Maybe one of them has a wagon or something," RoZita said. "I think I saw one out there somewhere. We could take him in that. I want to leave here too. It's…creepy. I sure don't want to spend the night here, with all those dead bodies lying around - yuck. We can tie her and put her in the wagon with him."

"I don't want her anywhere near him," Elena said icily.

"Well, we could tie a rope to her and make her walk behind Fezeek. We couldn't go very fast anyway."

"Very well then," Elena said, "I believe you are right. You are sure there is a wagon? I do not think Tornado is used to pulling wagons, and he is too excitable, but there are other horses here, I see. Perhaps they could be hitched to one."

"I'll go see. I'm not absolutely sure, it was a long ways off, and we were-sort of occupied. But I'll double check."

Alejandro moaned a little, whispering the word "Agua." Elena leaned over to hear him.

"He needs water," RoZita said again. "He'll get dehydrated if we don't get him some. Rum would only make him thirstier, I think. We'd better ask her where to get water." She made a little face at the prospect of having to ask Nestrelda anything.

"If she gives you any trouble," Elena said through clenched teeth, "just tell me. I can be very persuasive, I assure you."

She heard a sob from Alejandro, and bent down to him with tears springing into her own eyes.

"What is it, mi amor?" she whispered.

"I want to go away from here," he said, sounding as much a child as Willy, reaching up a hot hand to touch her cheek. "This is a terrible place. I will die here."

"I want to leave too," Elena said, a couple of tears escaping her eyes as she took his hand in both hers and kissed it. "We will go as soon as we can find you some water."

"Who is that man who looks like me?" he whispered as she kissed his hand over and over.

"I do not know," she said, smoothing back the curls from his forehead. "Do not talk now, my darling. Save your strength. Just let us take care of you."

RoZita stopped short as she saw no sign of Nestrelda, and she gasped thinking the gypsy had escaped. Then she saw that Nestrelda had been tied to a different tree, one with much more shade. Ahmed had moved her, of course.

He is just too kind, RoZita thought with a little glow inside…no, it was much too soon to be in love, she had known him for less than two hours, surely. Even if he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and the kindest and bravest, of course it was much too soon…

Smiling, she went to where she thought she had seen the wagon, and yes, it was there. The mule was even still tied to it, looking very bored. Then she saw Ahmed coming with Willy.

She told him of their wish to be moved as Willy, feeling the effects of the fruit he had gorged himself on earlier, darted off to a stand of bushes to relieve himself. They walked slowly to the cave, when suddenly Nestrelda's voice startled them.

"You must not go to the waterfall," she hissed at them. They turned to stare at her. "HE is there. He is waiting for Señorita Montero so he could bring her here."

"What are you saying?" Ahmed moved nearer to the gypsy, and saw that she was crying a little.

"Carnal Love," she said sniffling and lowering her voice. "If you go there, he will lie in ambush and kill all of you. He was going to bring Elena here so he could have his way with her before he killed Alejandro in revenge for the death of his brother. And you must leave here before he comes back or he will kill all of us. I know a place you can go where he will not find you. There is water there, too."

"Why are you telling us this?" Ahmed said. "Are you not on his side?"

Elena, hearing the conversation, emerged from the cave, incredulous and distrusting. Nestrelda swallowed and wiped her eyes and nose on the ropes that bound her hands before she spoke.

"You would not let that boy throw the stone at me," she said, "and you told him to treat me with respect. And you moved me into the shade. No man has ever treated me with respect or kindness before. No man ever treated me like anything but a whore."

"Is that so?" Elena said coldly. "Well, I am not surprised. People usually get treated the way they act. When one acts like a lady, one gets treated like a lady. When one acts like a whore, one gets treated like a -"

"Elena," Ahmed looked sternly at her.

"I never knew how to act like a lady," Nestrelda said defensively, but without sullenness. "No one ever show me. But you must not go to the waterfall. If you do, he will kill you all, and he will come back here and kill us if we stay. I know where we can go. There is a stream of cold water and a rock shelter. I go there sometimes . . . when I want to be by myself."

"This is all an act," Elena said. "Why should we trust her? She may be trying to lead us into a trap."

RoZita thought to herself that if this were an act, then Nestrelda was one hell of a fine actress. The tears were real.

Ahmed said, "She may be telling the truth. And it IS dangerous to stay here. There may be more men where the others came from, and they may slip in and kill us."

"We cannot take horses," Nestrelda said. "Or the camel. The way is too narrow. We can walk it, is less than half a mile."

"How will we move Alejandro?" Elena said with a glance back toward the cave. "Ahmed, you cannot carry him that distance? Would he not be too heavy?"

"I have an idea," RoZita said. "I saw a bunch of bamboo poles in the cave. We can tie those together and make a stretcher."

"We can take my donkey," Nestrelda said. "We can load food and weapons on him, and the boy could ride him."

Fifteen minutes later, Ahmed and RoZita were in the lead on the path bearing the crudely constructed stretcher, the donkey following close behind with Willy astride, looking both frightened and proud of himself, while Elena brought up the rear carefully guarding Nestrelda lest the gypsy prove treacherous.

It was downhill most of the way. In the distance they heard the stream and smelled the freshness of the water. It was a beautiful place, with ferns and palmettos and flowering vines growing luxuriantly. A rock ledge on the other side of the stream provided some shelter. They waded across the shallow water, then laid Alejandro down beneath the rock ledge on a bed of soft sand and brought him a drink of cold water in a jug they had tied onto the donkey. He absorbed it like a sponge. RoZita soaked a blanket and laid it over him.

"What are you doing?" Elena gasped.

"We have to bring his fever down," RoZita explained. "To do that we have to keep cold water on him. If we don't, his temperature will keep rising."

"You are a nurse?"

"No, but I come from a medically minded family."

The cold blanket seemed soothing to Alejandro. Elena sat down with him once more. RoZita brought him and Elena a couple of beautiful and fragrant white flowers and some ferns that grew nearby, thinking perhaps they would help him to forget some of the events of the day and concentrate on getting well. Then she went to where Ahmed and Nestrelda were tending to the donkey, unloading the food and medicinal supplies and guns. Stooping down beside the stream, she wet a rag and scrubbed at the paint on her face. Tears gathered into her eyes and spilled over before she could stop them. Everything was just so overwhelming, she could hardly begin to comprehend it.

"Are you all right?" she heard Ahmed's voice say behind her. She started, hastily wiping her face, not wanting him to see her like this.

"Just cleaning this goop off," she snuffled. "I must look like a raccoon by now."

"You can be quite proud," he said, kneeling down on the bank of the stream beside her, laying a hand on her shoulder. It produced a powerful feeling in her. "You are brave and clever and resourceful. Today has been a wonderful day."

"Yes," she said, "you're right. This has been the big mama of crazy days…and yet, it's been the greatest day of my whole life. You know what all this reminds me of? This really old, OLD movie I saw called 'The Sheik.' The Sheik of Araby - his name was Ahmed too - is in love with this English girl and he abducts her intending to make her fall for him, which of course she does seeing as how he's Rudolph Valentino…"

She broke off, knowing he hadn't a clue who Rudolph Valentino was, or a movie either.

"A movie…that is what you watch on the magic box?" he asked. "Like a play, but without the stage, only in the box?"

"Something like that. And Rudolph Valentino was an actor. In this movie the dumb twit he abducts spends the first half of the movie resisting his advances, even though he's like totally dreamboat city, and he does everything short of tying her to the bed to make her fall in love with him, but finally she flips over him after she thinks he might be killed. . . ."

She hardly dared look him in the face, telling herself once more it was too soon to be in love, that what she actually felt was a mixture of admiration, protectiveness, respect, tenderness, gratitude...and pure-dee animal lust. She wanted to pounce on him like a tigress and wrestle him to the ground, then she wanted to take a stick and write, "Ahmed, I love you!" in the sand just like the girl in the movie. And kiss him over and over, and lie in his arms until dawn…

Less than a mile away, Carnal Love waited for Elena, fuming.

He found something draped over a tree, some kind of black robe with pretty gold-edged designs on it, birds and trees, maybe it was hers? Looked kind of Japanese, although at the back of the neck he saw a small tag marked Dillards - whatever that meant, it didn't sound very Japanese. There were signs of upheaval, branches littering the meadow grass, which was scorched in a couple of places, and one or two of those strange droppings he'd seen on the road…but Elena was not to be seen.

In frustration Carnal Love poked around the trysting place, silently willing her to show, talking to his horse, snapping at branches with his sword in frustration and cursing. He thought about her eyes, her long black hair, her creamy skin and crimson lips, how her soft body would feel clasped against his. She was a spirited creature, and he liked that. He pictured the look on Murieta's face when he had his way with her in front of him before dispatching the bandit once and for all. Then Elena would be his slave... Maybe he wouldn't kill Alejandro after all, just hold him prisoner and get what he wanted from her in exchange for keeping Murieta alive. Maybe that would be even better than killing him, certainly be more fun…

But where in the hell was she?

He sighed, lit a cigar and sat down on a stone, then noticed something. The whinny of a horse that was not his own. It seemed to be coming from under the ground.


	10. Walking in Goodness

~Chapter 10~

RoZita could hold back no longer, she had to touch him. She put up a hand and laid it, hesitantly, on his shoulder, then let it slide down over the muscles of his arm. She felt dizzy remembering the touch of his lips on hers, his muscular body pressed against her body on the camel, his curly damp hair under her fingers….

And just at that moment as he laid a hand over hers, Elena emerged from the rock shelter crying, "Please come, Alejandro is getting worse!"

His skin was flushed deep red and felt alarmingly hot. Although they had no thermometer, RoZita would have wagered that his temperature was close to 108 degrees Fahrenheit. The real danger point. He seemed unaware of his surroundings and was jerking his head from side to side moaning. He appeared to be in pain.

"What will we do?" Elena almost yelled. "There is no doctor around for miles!"

"Let's put him in the water," RoZita said, "in the shallow part of the stream. The water is cold and may bring his temp down."

"Are you sure? The water felt very cold crossing it."

"It's not quite so cold in the shallow part where the sun hits. If we don't bring his fever down he may die."

Once more they lifted Alejandro onto the bamboo stretcher.

"Get those pants off him," RoZita ordered. In spite of everything it made her feel rather good to be telling others what to do. For once in her life she was in command. "The less he's wearing the better."

They laid him in only his long drawers in the shallowest part of the stream, where the cool water flowed over him, just his head and shoulders on the sandy bank. Willy and Nestrelda watched with silent interest. Elena wet a rag and bathed his face and neck with it, then laid it across his forehead. Then took his hand in hers once more.

~O~O~

Carnal Love poked around the cave, touching the weapons hanging on the walls, taking some down and examining them, then touching the ropes strung from ceiling to floor, swinging himself over them. Then he saw the large design of circles on the floor, which matched the silver medallion Alejandro wore.

Shaking his head, he exited the cave. Still no Elena. Face it, she wasn't coming. Swearing, he untied his horse and mounted, and dug his spurs in the beast's flanks harder than was necessary and began riding back to the cutthroats' lair.

By and by, he saw some buzzards circling near the boulders where Cochino had been stationed as lookout. Love peered downward and spied two bodies. One of them he didn't recognize, the other was…Cochino. With a big hole torn out of his back and a mightily surprised look on his bloodied-up brown face, around which buzzed a swarm of bluebottle flies. Something that looked like a copper earring lying nearby. A scrap of gold silk clinging to a bramble bush. Footprints, some of which looked quite feminine.

Love was shaken. Proceeding with caution he rode into the lair, one hand on the pistol in his belt. And a little further up the way...

No, it couldn't be. He hadn't had more than a few swigs of whiskey, so surely his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. He rubbed them hard and looked again. And ventured closer to assure himself that no-indeedy-sunshine, that was NOT a goddamn white camel tied to a tree up ahead!

But it was. And where the hell was Murieta? And the others?

When he saw what was under the big blanket, he jumped back in terror and revulsion. How did the bastard get loose? he wondered. What do you want to bet it was that bitch of a Nestrelda that freed him? When I get my hands on that gypsy whore, I'll tear her limb from limb, I swear to Godalmighty!

Shuddering, he dropped the blanket and glanced nervously around. Buzzing of flies caught his ear further into the woods and he proceeded with caution, drawing his pistol from his belt. Presently he spied some sort of blood-stained white garment lying on the ground, and, and…

"Sweet Jesus," he gasped as he saw the mutilated bodies, drawing back in nauseated horror. It looked like part of a battlefield. Murieta couldn't have done all this by hisself, Love surmised, Zorro or no Zorro. Somebody was in cahoots with him. Hmmmm...maybe Elena had got worried when he didn't show up and had rounded up a posse to rescue her lover boy?

Yes, that must be it. He ought to have known. She was a spunky gal, he shoulda give her more credit. Of course, there weren't many, including hisself, who woulda wanted to tangle with the likes of Scourge. His tattooed mug was on many a WANTED poster with a high price, but you didn't notice many riding out to try to earn that reward. And those few who did just kinda mysteriously disappeared.

But where the hell had that dad-blasted camel come from? Not many posses went around riding on camels!

Love's knees were shaking now. Maybe he should just haul his big fat ass outa here right this minute. Some of them might be still lying in wait. It was too silent around here now. Downright spooky…then he spied something lying near the tree Murieta had been tied to. A small shoe. Very small, like it belonged to a little boy. A boy Willy's age maybe.

But how in the hell would Willy have gotten here?

Yet the shoe had a button missing. Luisa had been fussing yesterday about Willy always popping the buttons off his shoes, waving that very button around, till Ruby Mae impatiently snatched it away from the girl and laid it on the bureau, saying she'd sew it back on when she got around to it.

It was still there. The shoe was Willy's.

Ahmed knelt off by himself, and although he was speaking in Arabic, RoZita could see he was praying. Nestrelda and Willy were sitting by the bank of the stream with their bare feet in the water, and the gypsy was showing the boy how to catch fish with his bare hands. "You got to be quiet," she kept telling him, "or you scare the fishes." RoZita got the feeling Nestrelda was trying to keep him from making too much noise and disturbing Alejandro.

"Where is your other shoe?" the gypsy asked in a whisper.

"I dunno," Willy whispered back, trying to snatch at a crawfish in the stream. "I took it off cuz it had a rock in it. Then I forgot to put it back on-hey, look, is that a snake?"

RoZita put a hand to the back of her head, which was hurting badly from the blow now. She could see Elena crossing herself, a gesture that looked odd with the oriental costume she still wore, and decided it wouldn't hurt to pray herself. She thought, well, Elena is Catholic, I am Protestant, and he is Moslem, surely God will listen to at least one of us if not all…

"Merciful and compassionate Allah," Ahmed was saying, "please forgive me for losing my faith when my wife and son were lost in the epidemic. I do not know why this man's life is so important to me. I do not know him, and yet I feel that somehow I have always known him. He saved my life, as I saved his, and now it seems so senseless that he should be lost after all that. I feel somehow that his life is important to the fate of the world. I am sure You brought me here for a purpose. So now I kneel before You as Your servant to plead for his life. For all we ought to have done and have not done…"

"Alejandro," Elena whispered, "you must not leave us. I am carrying your child. You must struggle to live. We need you. The country needs you. Perhaps the whole world needs you. Yes, it does, for the world needs a hero. A hero keeps the people's eyes turned up toward heaven. Without him their eyes are turned downward. They have no visions. They can look no further than the dust at their feet. And then they turn to dust themselves. But you could keep their faces turned to the light, so that they become filled with that light. They will become rich inside, glowing with color and warmth. Please, mi amor, you must not let that light go out..."

"What did you say?" Alejandro looked up at her, taking a deep breath. Elena started, looking at him. "We'll get a baby? You mean it?"

Tenderly she bent and kissed his hot lips, tears filling her eyes once more. "Yes, mi amor, of course we will!" It seemed to her he looked just a little more alive. . . .

RoZita knelt down by the stream. She tried to pray also but her head was still throbbing. All she could think was, "Please, spare him…please." She heard a step behind her but did not turn or look up. Then she felt hands on her head, fingertips kneading her temples, pressing on certain areas of her head and neck. She supposed it was Ahmed, although the hands seemed a bit small to be his. Her headache went away almost immediately.

"Better?" she heard Nestrelda's voice say. She started, then turned slowly to see the gypsy standing behind her.

"Tylenol never worked that fast," RoZita said with a little smile. Nestrelda smiled a little also, even though she had no idea what Tylenol was. Lacking the animal coarseness and cruelty, her round face had something girlish and appealing about it, with the long black braids and copper earrings framing it, little curls clinging to her sweaty forehead.

"Look," Willy said, pointing toward the path through which they had come. A big black horse had appeared, foaming and sweating.

Alejandro sat up in the water. "Tornado is here," he said with a kind of boyish sweetness and innocence. "He has found me."

Elena touched his face. "Your fever has gone down," she said with quiet joy.

Ahmed found a dry garment in his bag and he and Elena helped Alejandro out of his soaking drawers and into the dry robe. Then they made him lie down under the overhang and covered him with a thin sheet. Ahmed found a large flask in the bag of medicinal supplies.

"This is a solution of opium and morphia," he said, pulling the stopper from the flask and sniffing it, then holding it to Alejandro. "Drink some of it. It will ease the pain and help you sleep."

"Laudanum? Will it help me forget this day?" Alejandro asked with a sigh. He tipped the bottle to his lips.

"Only for a while," Ahmed said. "I regret I have nothing that can do that. It will remain to Elena and to you…There, do not drink too much. That could be fatal."

Alejandro handed the flask back to Ahmed. "It seems so strange . . . to see your own face bending over you," he said. "Are you really my twin?"

"I suppose it is…possible." Ahmed wondered if it could be that Alejandro was a descendant of his, that could account for the resemblance.

"I had a brother," Alejandro said. "He was not a twin, he was older than I, and he did not look like me. Yet now, it almost seems I have him back again."

He reached up and touched Ahmed's face. Even their hands were alike, finely shaped with long straight fingers. Ahmed pushed a wet curl off Alejandro's forehead, then kissed his hand.

"Try to sleep now," he said. "You have had a terrible time. But I think you will be all right. You are a hero."

Alejandro smiled sleepily. The drink was already taking effect. "Yes. I will be a father. Thank you…hermanito."

Ahmed winced inside, but said only, "Hermanito? What is that?"

"Little brother," Alejandro said, then closed his eyes and fell asleep.

~O~O~

Carnal Love stared at Tornado galloping off into the woods. At first he just stood there wondering why in creation Murieta would go off without his horse. Then it occurred to him that maybe the horse was going after his master…With a grin Carnal turned to follow the animal when he felt a whopping blow to his rear that sent him sprawling forward, hitting his head on a stump.

When he came to he had the worst headache he'd ever experienced in his whole life. Groaning, he tried to raise his head, but the motion caused even more pain than just lying still. He felt something damp in his hair, and supposing it to be blood, he put up a hand to his head and found that he was right.

"Almighty Jesus Christ," he moaned. His butt hurt too, but not as much as his head. That dad-blasted camel had kicked him, he'd stupidly turned his back to the beast when he heard Tornado. "Shit," he gasped as spasms of pain nearly blinded him, and he wondered if his skull was fractured. No, couldn't be, he'd be dead then, wouldn't he?

For a while he couldn't even think straight, couldn't remember why he was here, where he was, what had happened. But the smell of Scourge's dead body, none too fragrant even when he'd been living, slowly brought Love back to reality.

"Willy," he whispered, remembering the shoe. And the horse. Where had the varmit gone?

He sat up, in spite of the agonizing pain in his head. If that damn stump had 'a been just one foot closer, he'd 'a been a goner, he realized. But he had to get Willy back. He couldn't just lay here all day when there was a chance the boy might be alive and Murieta and Elena's posse had him. And he reckoned it weren't no use going after the horse. In the first place he didn't know where it had gone to. Second place, wherever Murieta was, he had good backup now. There was no way Love was going to take him all by hisself. But what was he to do now that Scourge's band was all strewn around providing a Sunday-school picnic for flies and buzzards?

"Carnal, you're a old woman," he told himself, moaning a little as the effort of speaking worsened his head further, but all the same it was better than listening to the silence. "You gotta do something. It's your boy. What would Harrison of done?"

Harrison had been a soldier. He had a cool head and a cold eye, and he would 'a known what to do. Carnal fingered the pistol that had belonged to his brother. Harrison wouldn't 'a let hisself get his ass kicked by a goddamn camel, he'd 'a rode out and rousted them son of a bitches and got his boy back. He would 'a called out the cavalry.

"Cavalry," Love said to himself, grinning in spite of the pain. "Yes. By god, why didn't I think of that in the first place. Yes-indeedy-sunshine. Cavalry. Cornelius, maybe you ain't so dumb after all, boy."

And he rose and staggered toward his own horse, which was calmly cropping the grass near the body of Scourge.

Ahmed sank down beside the stream once more, leaning his head against his hand, when he heard RoZita slip up behind him, as he had rather hoped she would. She held the jar of salve in one hand.

"Are you all right?" she asked him. "Why don't you let me put some of this on those scratches now. They look pretty bad."

He let her apply the salve. It reminded him of a time, long ago…very long ago indeed…when Olga had applied an ointment she said was made from cow urine to his face. RoZita was quite different from Olga. She was gentler. When he winced, she winced too. Her eyes were a soft green and still looked innocent in spite of everything that had passed.

"How did you get those scars?" she asked him. "Did a lion take a swipe at you?"

"A bear," he said with a little smile, but the smile was sad. "You have a good touch. You would make a fine nurse."

"Do you think he'll be all right now?" she asked.

"Thanks to you, I believe he will. He is going to be a father. That is a fine thing, a wonderful thing." There was an unmistakable ache in his voice.

"You…are a father?" She realized she knew nothing about him really. He was silent for a long moment, and she wondered if she had said the wrong thing.

"I was," he said finally, and his voice seemed to come from a great distance. "My wife and my child died of cholera three years ago. My son would have been six years old now. I was away on a mission to Algeria and did not fall ill. When I returned to Baghdad, they were dead and buried two weeks gone. Olga was pregnant with our second child. There were so many who died in the epidemic. Sometimes…I cannot forgive myself for not dying with them."

She gasped and he looked away, tears filling his eyes. The pain in his voice horrified and dismayed her. But after a moment she put her arms around him and he leaned against her and sobbed. She held him as tightly as she could, pressing her cheek to the top of his head. She had never been in such close proximity to such profound grief. The thought of losing a mate and a child was unimaginable to her.

She stroked the curls at the back of his head, wondering if it were depraved of her to feel both maternal and lustful at the same time. No, she told herself, lust was not the right word. She wanted him, true enough, but lust did not begin to describe that feeling.

She finally gave into the urge to kiss the side of his neck where it angled into his shoulder. And then suddenly she heard a yelp that startled them both. It came from Willy, who was frantically trying to hold onto a big fish.

"Look what I caught!" he yelled, as Nestrelda tried to keep the trout from flopping back into the stream. Ahmed smiled a little in spite of his reddened eyes.

"The boy has caught dinner for us," he said.

Nestrelda borrowed RoZita's dagger and skillfully gutted the fish. RoZita and Elena gathered firewood, which was quite plentiful in the woods, and Ahmed attempted to build a fire by rubbing sticks. RoZita tried to think whether matches had been invented before 1849, and even if they had been, who would have any? Then she had an inspiration.

"The bag of makeup," she said. "Where is it?"

"Makeup?" Ahmed said with raised eyebrows.

"You know, the face paint. It had a mirror in it. We can catch the sunlight with it and ignite some dry leaves."

"RoZita, what would we ever have done without you?" Ahmed gave her a proud smile that thrilled her to the core.

As they built the fire, Nestrelda whittled a green branch into a spit to roast the fish.

"That was a pretty good catch, wasn't it?" Willy said as the gypsy skewered the fish and set it in the crotch of two forked green sticks Ahmed had driven into the ground by each side of the fire. "I caught a couple of little ones, but Nestrelda made me let 'em go. Then I got this big fella. I'm some fisherman, ain't I?"

RoZita smiled at him. She hadn't liked this kid at first sight, although in general she was fond of children. She'd pegged him as an obnoxious brat with an undoubtable mean streak. But now, radiant with cheeky pride over his first catch, he actually was…cute.

"Yeah, that was some catch, for a beginner," she said. "And without any rod or reel or net or anything. That's really cool, Willy."

"Cool?"

"Yeah, you know, like, well…cool." She shrugged.

"Oh. Cool." His chubby freckled face creased into an impish grin. "That was cool how you built the fire too."

"Thanks," she grinned back, reaching out to rumple up his stubbly reddish-blond hair. "That WAS pretty cool, wasn't it?"

Alejandro stirred in his sleep. Elena hastened over to him. He groaned a little. She bent down whispering, "Alejandro? Are you better now?"

"Elena?" He blinked, glancing all around. "Where am I? You are here?"

"Yes darling. Do you feel any better now?"

"I hurt everywhere…but I will live." He smiled with groggy sweetness at her. "The others…where are they?"

"They are here. They are cooking dinner now. Do you think you could eat something?"

"My mouth feels strange…but yes, I am hungry." Alejandro tried to sit up, wincing at the pain in his wounds. "I can see him now. This place is no longer evil, he has blessed it with his presence. He walks in goodness. You can see that in his eyes."

He did not seem aware that he had been moved from the cutthroats' lair.

"We are not there anymore," Elena told him. "We moved you to another place far away from there. Well, not so far. But far enough."

Alejandro seemed not to have heard her. "He is sad, though. You can see that too. I wish I could find out what troubles him. I sometimes believe I could have saved Don Diego if I had known sooner what troubled him so. But he never would speak of it to me for a long time. I suppose he could not bear to. I sometimes think that if I had known sooner, perhaps I could have helped him to get you back from Montero without him being killed."

"I doubt that and there is no use regretting what could not be helped, Alejandro. You did what you could, and you did splendidly. As for Ahmed, perhaps she can help him with whatever troubles him."

"Who is she?" Alejandro squinted at the girl he could see kneeling close to Ahmed.

"I have no idea really." Elena wondered what he would have said if she had told him RoZita had come from the year 1980. Then she saw a look of horror creep into Alejandro's eyes. "What is it?"

She looked around to see what he was looking at, a chill running over her.


	11. The Pretty Fair Maid

~Chapter 9~

Ahmed lifted and carried Alejandro over to the small cave which smelled of horses and contained many small pallets, and laid him down on the nearest one. Elena tied Nestrelda, none too gently, to the nearly dead tree where Alejandro had been tied, persuading her to cooperate with the help of her pistol. As she bound Nestrelda's hands, the gypsy called her a name that was unspeakable in any language and spat at her. Elena raised a hand to strike her, then stopped herself.

"I would gladly slap you all the way to hell, you daughter of Beelzebub," she said, her beautiful face as cold and white as the moon, "but I am not like you. I am not one to do violence to people who are tied up, even when they are the spawn of demons."

Alejandro held onto Ahmed for a moment as the Arab set him down, shuddering, and Ahmed spoke to him gently, as he would to a frightened horse. He could hardly help noticing how warm Alejandro was.

Finally Ahmed whispered, "Thank you for saving my life." Alejandro nodded and Ahmed laid him on his side, feeling him for broken bones, a little sickened at the damage he saw. Whip marks back and front, a burn or two, bruises and deep scratches, lacerations, a couple of small puncture wounds. And in spite of it all he could still see the resemblance between Alejandro and himself. It was truly uncanny. Of all the strange things that had happened today, this was the strangest!

Elena ran to Alejandro, weeping, and threw herself down beside him. Ahmed rose and went to see about RoZita, who was now standing near the mouth of the cave. She still seemed stunned.

"Are you all right?" he asked her. "Let me see." He lifted her bloody hair in back to examine the wound. She winced a little but made no sound. "Does it hurt much?" he asked her.

"I can hardly feel it," she said. She was shaking all over. "Do you think he'll be OK? I think he has a high fever. We need to get him some cold water. He's liable to get dehydrated without it, and rum would only make him worse."

"I do not know," Ahmed said looking down at Alejandro, whom he could hardly see now for Elena leaning over him. "He is in a bad way. Why don't you sit down with them while I go to get some medicine supplies."

He led her into the cave with an arm around her and guided her to another of the pallets. Then he found a much larger blanket, probably Scourge's, judging from the size. Willy followed him to the body of the pirate, over which flies were beginning to congregate.

"Are you going to bury him?" Willy asked, wrinkling his snub nose.

"No. I am not strong enough to move him. All I can do is cover him."

"He stinks. And he's got bugs all over him."

"Yes." Ahmed covered the huge charred bloody body, trying not to be sick. Every muscle in his own body ached, especially his arm where Scourge had twisted it. If not for Alejandro, the brute would have broken it…just before cutting his throat.

"I hate him," Willy said. "He hurt me. When he grabbed my arm and started yanking me along. I'm glad he's dead." His lower lip quivered a little.

"He was a very bad man," Ahmed said with an inward shudder, thinking he had never seen anything that looked more monstrous, not even the Wendol. "He enjoyed hurting people. It was fun to him."

"Are you the real Zorro?" Willy asked. Ahmed looked at him, startled. He said you were," Willy explained, looking toward the small cave.

"He has a fever, perhaps he was delirious when he said that and did not know what he was saying. But he is the real Zorro."

"But you look like him. Are you his twin brother?"

"Perhaps." Ahmed decided that would be easier than explaining the truth to the boy. "Come with me to see my camel."

Willy followed him to where Fezeek was tied to a tree, nibbling at leaves. Ahmed untied him and spoke Arabic, so that the camel sank to his knees. Ahmed put Willy up on his hump and then climbed up in front of him, instructing him to hold on. They rode back to the overhang where they dismounted and tethered Fezeek to another tree. Then Ahmed took a bag hanging from the animal's saddle. Willy looked over at Nestrelda, who was staring at the camel in disbelief.

"I hate her too," Willy said, plenty loud enough for the gypsy to hear. "She is a bitch." He stooped and picked up a rock to throw at her. Ahmed grabbed his wrist and made him drop the stone.

"You must never say that word about any woman, Willy," he said sternly. "Women are to be respected always. They are the source of all human life, including your own."

Willy stared at him uncomprehendingly, then pouted.

"I want to go home. He promised to take me."

"We cannot take you just now, Willy. Later we will find a way to take you home. But just now it is impossible."

"But he promised me. And I want to go."

"I understand, my child. But he was ill when he said it. Sometimes when people are ill they do not know what they are saying. He is more ill now, and may die. Please try to think of someone besides yourself for a while, Willy."

The boy gave him the goggle-eyed stare of someone who has just been presented with a totally foreign concept.

But he said nothing. He followed the Arab into the small cave, where Ahmed opened the bag and took out several bottles and jars. He pulled the stoppers of several, and settled on one, which he handed to Elena.

"This is salve made from cactus and balm and aloe. Put that on his wounds," he said. Turning to RoZita, he said, "Let me examine that cut once more."

He put something on it that stung at first but began to soothe after a minute or two. Gently he stroked her hair over the cut. She sniffled a little, then looked at Alejandro with concern.

"We should get him near some cold water," she said. "We need to get his fever down. Elena, do you know if there is a body of cold water nearby?"

"I am unfamiliar with this area," Elena said as she doctored the whip marks on his back. "The only stream I know of is near where we started - at our waterfall."

"We should get him there," RoZita said. "It could be dangerous here - that other man he was talking about may come back here. But how can we? He can't ride, can he?"

"Perhaps Ahmed could hold him up on the camel, and you and the boy could ride with me on Tornado. But what do we do with her? We can hardly leave her here, she may escape, and she could be dangerous."

"Maybe one of them has a wagon or something," RoZita said. "I think I saw one out there somewhere. We could take him in that. I want to leave here too. It's…creepy. I sure don't want to spend the night here, with all those dead bodies lying around - yuck. We can tie her and put her in the wagon with him."

"I don't want her anywhere near him," Elena said icily.

"Well, we could tie a rope to her and make her walk behind Fezeek. We couldn't go very fast anyway."

"Very well then," Elena said, "I believe you are right. You are sure there is a wagon? I do not think Tornado is used to pulling wagons, and he is too excitable, but there are other horses here, I see. Perhaps they could be hitched to one."

"I'll go see. I'm not absolutely sure, it was a long ways off, and we were-sort of occupied. But I'll double check."

Alejandro moaned a little, whispering the word "Agua." Elena leaned over to hear him.

"He needs water," RoZita said again. "He'll get dehydrated if we don't get him some. Rum would only make him thirstier, I think. We'd better ask her where to get water." She made a little face at the prospect of having to ask Nestrelda anything.

"If she gives you any trouble," Elena said through clenched teeth, "just tell me. I can be very persuasive, I assure you."

She heard a sob from Alejandro, and bent down to him with tears springing into her own eyes.

"What is it, mi amor?" she whispered.

"I want to go away from here," he said, sounding as much a child as Willy, reaching up a hot hand to touch her cheek. "This is a terrible place. I will die here."

"I want to leave too," Elena said, a couple of tears escaping her eyes as she took his hand in both hers and kissed it. "We will go as soon as we can find you some water."

"Who is that man who looks like me?" he whispered as she kissed his hand over and over.

"I do not know," she said, smoothing back the curls from his forehead. "Do not talk now, my darling. Save your strength. Just let us take care of you."

RoZita stopped short as she saw no sign of Nestrelda, and she gasped thinking the gypsy had escaped. Then she saw that Nestrelda had been tied to a different tree, one with much more shade. Ahmed had moved her, of course.

He is just too kind, RoZita thought with a little glow inside…no, it was much too soon to be in love, she had known him for less than two hours, surely. Even if he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and the kindest and bravest, of course it was much too soon…

Smiling, she went to where she thought she had seen the wagon, and yes, it was there. The mule was even still tied to it, looking very bored. Then she saw Ahmed coming with Willy.

She told him of their wish to be moved as Willy, feeling the effects of the fruit he had gorged himself on earlier, darted off to a stand of bushes to relieve himself. They walked slowly to the cave, when suddenly Nestrelda's voice startled them.

"You must not go to the waterfall," she hissed at them. They turned to stare at her. "HE is there. He is waiting for Señorita Montero so he could bring her here."

"What are you saying?" Ahmed moved nearer to the gypsy, and saw that she was crying a little.

"Carnal Love," she said sniffling and lowering her voice. "If you go there, he will lie in ambush and kill all of you. He was going to bring Elena here so he could have his way with her before he killed Alejandro in revenge for the death of his brother. And you must leave here before he comes back or he will kill all of us. I know a place you can go where he will not find you. There is water there, too."

"Why are you telling us this?" Ahmed said. "Are you not on his side?"

Elena, hearing the conversation, emerged from the cave, incredulous and distrusting. Nestrelda swallowed and wiped her eyes and nose on the ropes that bound her hands before she spoke.

"You would not let that boy throw the stone at me," she said, "and you told him to treat me with respect. And you moved me into the shade. No man has ever treated me with respect or kindness before. No man ever treated me like anything but a whore."

"Is that so?" Elena said coldly. "Well, I am not surprised. People usually get treated the way they act. When one acts like a lady, one gets treated like a lady. When one acts like a whore, one gets treated like a -"

"Elena," Ahmed looked sternly at her.

"I never knew how to act like a lady," Nestrelda said defensively, but without sullenness. "No one ever show me. But you must not go to the waterfall. If you do, he will kill you all, and he will come back here and kill us if we stay. I know where we can go. There is a stream of cold water and a rock shelter. I go there sometimes . . . when I want to be by myself."

"This is all an act," Elena said. "Why should we trust her? She may be trying to lead us into a trap."

RoZita thought to herself that if this were an act, then Nestrelda was one hell of a fine actress. The tears were real.

Ahmed said, "She may be telling the truth. And it IS dangerous to stay here. There may be more men where the others came from, and they may slip in and kill us."

"We cannot take horses," Nestrelda said. "Or the camel. The way is too narrow. We can walk it, is less than half a mile."

"How will we move Alejandro?" Elena said with a glance back toward the cave. "Ahmed, you cannot carry him that distance? Would he not be too heavy?"

"I have an idea," RoZita said. "I saw a bunch of bamboo poles in the cave. We can tie those together and make a stretcher."

"We can take my donkey," Nestrelda said. "We can load food and weapons on him, and the boy could ride him."

Fifteen minutes later, Ahmed and RoZita were in the lead on the path bearing the crudely constructed stretcher, the donkey following close behind with Willy astride, looking both frightened and proud of himself, while Elena brought up the rear carefully guarding Nestrelda lest the gypsy prove treacherous.

It was downhill most of the way. In the distance they heard the stream and smelled the freshness of the water. It was a beautiful place, with ferns and palmettos and flowering vines growing luxuriantly. A rock ledge on the other side of the stream provided some shelter. They waded across the shallow water, then laid Alejandro down beneath the rock ledge on a bed of soft sand and brought him a drink of cold water in a jug they had tied onto the donkey. He absorbed it like a sponge. RoZita soaked a blanket and laid it over him.

"What are you doing?" Elena gasped.

"We have to bring his fever down," RoZita explained. "To do that we have to keep cold water on him. If we don't, his temperature will keep rising."

"You are a nurse?"

"No, but I come from a medically minded family."

The cold blanket seemed soothing to Alejandro. Elena sat down with him once more. RoZita brought him and Elena a couple of beautiful and fragrant white flowers and some ferns that grew nearby, thinking perhaps they would help him to forget some of the events of the day and concentrate on getting well. Then she went to where Ahmed and Nestrelda were tending to the donkey, unloading the food and medicinal supplies and guns. Stooping down beside the stream, she wet a rag and scrubbed at the paint on her face. Tears gathered into her eyes and spilled over before she could stop them. Everything was just so overwhelming, she could hardly begin to comprehend it.

"Are you all right?" she heard Ahmed's voice say behind her. She started, hastily wiping her face, not wanting him to see her like this.

"Just cleaning this goop off," she snuffled. "I must look like a raccoon by now."

"You can be quite proud," he said, kneeling down on the bank of the stream beside her, laying a hand on her shoulder. It produced a powerful feeling in her. "You are brave and clever and resourceful. Today has been a wonderful day."

"Yes," she said, "you're right. This has been the big mama of crazy days…and yet, it's been the greatest day of my whole life. You know what all this reminds me of? This really old, OLD movie I saw called 'The Sheik.' The Sheik of Araby - his name was Ahmed too - is in love with this English girl and he abducts her intending to make her fall for him, which of course she does seeing as how he's Rudolph Valentino…"

She broke off, knowing he hadn't a clue who Rudolph Valentino was, or a movie either.

"A movie…that is what you watch on the magic box?" he asked. "Like a play, but without the stage, only in the box?"

"Something like that. And Rudolph Valentino was an actor. In this movie the dumb twit he abducts spends the first half of the movie resisting his advances, even though he's like totally dreamboat city, and he does everything short of tying her to the bed to make her fall in love with him, but finally she flips over him after she thinks he might be killed. . . ."

She hardly dared look him in the face, telling herself once more it was too soon to be in love, that what she actually felt was a mixture of admiration, protectiveness, respect, tenderness, gratitude...and pure-dee animal lust. She wanted to pounce on him like a tigress and wrestle him to the ground, then she wanted to take a stick and write, "Ahmed, I love you!" in the sand just like the girl in the movie. And kiss him over and over, and lie in his arms until dawn…

Less than a mile away, Carnal Love waited for Elena, fuming.

He found something draped over a tree, some kind of black robe with pretty gold-edged designs on it, birds and trees, maybe it was hers? Looked kind of Japanese, although at the back of the neck he saw a small tag marked Dillards - whatever that meant, it didn't sound very Japanese. There were signs of upheaval, branches littering the meadow grass, which was scorched in a couple of places, and one or two of those strange droppings he'd seen on the road…but Elena was not to be seen.

In frustration Carnal Love poked around the trysting place, silently willing her to show, talking to his horse, snapping at branches with his sword in frustration and cursing. He thought about her eyes, her long black hair, her creamy skin and crimson lips, how her soft body would feel clasped against his. She was a spirited creature, and he liked that. He pictured the look on Murieta's face when he had his way with her in front of him before dispatching the bandit once and for all. Then Elena would be his slave... Maybe he wouldn't kill Alejandro after all, just hold him prisoner and get what he wanted from her in exchange for keeping Murieta alive. Maybe that would be even better than killing him, certainly be more fun…

But where in the hell was she?

He sighed, lit a cigar and sat down on a stone, then noticed something. The whinny of a horse that was not his own. It seemed to be coming from under the ground.


	12. Cavalry

~Chapter 12~

Willy didn't seem to notice RoZita standing behind him with her arms around his fat little body, as he stared off after the retreating horse. She could see he wasn't a dumb kid, and that he was seeing his father for what he really was, the man who'd had the real Zorro abducted and tortured, planning to rape Elena right in front of him and then kill him...

It made her a little sick. She stroked back the cowlick on top of his head, not knowing what to say to him. She looked to Ahmed to see if there was any council he could give to the boy.

"We should take you home to your mother now," he said gently. "Do you know the way, Willy?"

"No," the boy said almost inaudibly. "I don't even know how I got here."

"I know the way," Nestrelda said. "I can take him there on my donkey."

Willy sniffled. "I want to stay with you all."

"It is too dangerous for you, Willy," Ahmed explained. "I believe your father is going off to find help, and may come looking for us. If he sees you with us, he may become furious and try to kill us all, and you may be hurt or killed too."

"But perhaps that is why we should keep him with us," Nestrelda said. "Perhaps if the boy is with us, Carnal will not harm us."

"I don't know about that," RoZita said. "He's unpredictable, and I've seen what he's capable of. Ahmed is right, we should send him home to his mother."

Willy said, "But he doesn't know where we are." He sounded just like a tired little boy now.

"But he may find us," RoZita said. "He saw the camel, so he knows we can't be far away. Maybe the thing for us to do would be to move again...perhaps back to the waterfall and the cave? I think maybe Alejandro could ride now?"

"Yes," Ahmed said. "That is what we should do. The trail to the stream is a little too easy to follow, and I do not think we can take Fezeek there anyway. He is too large and the trail is too narrow."

When they arrived back at the stream, they found Alejandro and Elena asleep together. He lay on his back with her on her side cuddled close with one arm thrown across his chest. RoZita blushed and looked aside, for his robe had fallen away leaving him totally naked in front. Ahmed reached down and covered Alejandro with the robe, and then nudged the lovers both awake and told them the plan. As he did so RoZ smiled to herself thinking the resemblance between the two men did not end with the face. Although, to be sure, there was one very small difference: one was circumcised and the other wasn't.

~O~O~

Alejandro said he thought he could ride now. He even helped get rid of all traces that they had been there, tossing the charred wood into the stream and rolling up the bedding.

RoZita went off by herself to erase something she had written in the sand.

Willy wanted to take the fish's skeleton with him as a souvenir. Nestrelda helped him wrap it up in a piece of cloth. Elena brushed away the footprints in the sand with a pine branch. Ahmed gathered up all the supplies and put them back in the bag. He wished he could give Willy something for a keepsake also. Then he found one of the empty bottles, made of pretty green glass, and held that out to the boy.

"Here, Willy," he said. "Would you like to have this?"

Willy took it silently, and held it up to the sunlight so that it gleamed like a large emerald. "Thanks," he said very softly, lowering his eyes and cradling the bottle in both hands.

"I will miss you, Willy," Ahmed said, then bent and kissed him on the forehead.

"Me too," RoZita said and she did likewise. "You're really cool, you know it?"

Willy stared back at them as Nestrelda led him to the donkey and helped him climb aboard the animal. He sat behind the gypsy and looked back mournfully at the others over his shoulder as they rode off into the woods together until they were out of sight.

Alejandro was a bit shaky on his feet, but he managed to change into a pair of trousers and mount Tornado without much assistance, and Elena rode with him. Ahmed and RoZita followed on foot carrying the supplies. Ahmed obliterated Tornado's hoof prints with a sharp branch and kicked away any droppings. They said very little. She glanced up at his perfect profile from time to time with a little ache inside and thought about her message to him in the sand. Soon she began humming a song to herself and he looked down at her then. But she kept her eyes to the ground, pretending great interest in the ferns and wild flowers on the forest floor. And presently they halted at the sound of a loud cry from Alejandro.

~O~O~

"Carnal, I believe that whack on the head has done scrambled your brains," Hawk laughed as he kicked out the fifth candle flame in a row. "Any fool knows there ain't no camels in California."

"Now you don't know that," Love insisted. "There's all kinds o' crazy stuff here. And it couldn't possibly of been Murieta, I'm tellin' ya, he was tied to a goddamn tree. And if he'd a been there when I seen that damn camel, he'd of laid in ambush and blowed my silly head off. Probably the man ridin' him just looked kinda like Murieta or something."

"Rube swore up and down it was him. Said there was no mistaking, he knows the feller. Not that Rube's the brightest candle on the tree, but-"

"Did he say who the girl was?"

"Nope, said he never seen her before, just that she wasn't Señorita Montero. Said she had on men's clothes and he took her for a boy at first, till he seen her from the side. She weren't no boy with them titties, he said."

Hawk winked lewdly and kicked out the sixth flame. Love walked up to the chandelier and blew all out the remaining candles with one puff as though they were on a birthday cake.

"There, I just saved you the trouble. So are ya with me or not? If you are, then let's not waste no more time dilly-dallyin' around here. My boy's life may be at stake."

"Now just a minute, Carnal, are you forgettin' I'm with the Cavalry unit? I can't just go runnin' off without reportin' in or nothin', you think I want my ass throwed in the stockade for goin' absent without leave? Tell ya what, I betcha I can enlist a whole troop to go with us if I tell 'em it's to rescue your boy. Just leave it to me. I'm sure El Capitan will be very understandin'."

Carnal's face lit into a slow grin. What chance would even Elena's posse stand against a whole cavalry troop?

~O~O~

"What...what is that?" Alejandro looked nearly as white as Fezeek, which was what he was staring at.

"It is a camel, darling," Elena said as Ahmed and RoZita came running up behind them at the sound of his cry. "That's right, you have never seen one be - why do you look so? You look as though it were a ghost."

"I...I have seen this one before..." stammered Alejandro. "I FEEL as if seeing a ghost…I have seen it in dreams. I never knew what it was, and I forgot the dreams later on. But I swear, this...this white camel appeared in them. I did not know that dreams could be an omen of one's future."

"Strange indeed," Ahmed said. He came up next to Alejandro on the horse and looked up intently at him. "Do you remember anything else about the dreams?"

"No, hermanito...except for a great deal of sand."

Fifteen minutes later they were traveling up the road from whence they had come. They rode at a moderate pace. RoZita once more rode behind Ahmed on the camel. It was even lovelier to sit so close to him now with her body pressed to his, her arms encircling his waist. She longed to run her hands over him, stroke his arms, his chest, his shoulders, his head. The feel of his tush against her thighs was bliss. The oriental costume she wore, though a bit torn and dirty now, linked her all the more to him now.

And she wished to know more about him.

"Are you...alone?" she asked him finally. "You have no other family?" She thought of her own family, stuck forward in 1980. Why, they do not exist now, she thought with a little shock. They have never been born. I am alone in the world also. Only my ancestors exist now, and I don't know who or where they are...

"I have brothers," Ahmed replied with a sigh. "Once we were close, when I was a boy. But I have become estranged from them. They have become high officials in the court, and have been hopelessly corrupted by power. They cannot or will not see that the things they do are cruel and unfair. I believe they hate me now for refusing to participate in their plots and intrigues, that they might even have had me killed if I had not been their brother. I have become a celebrity in Baghdad through my travels and adventures, yet there is no more joy in it for me. Since my wife and child died, I have felt utterly alone and cast off from all humanity, I lost my religious faith, and my fame only brought me misery and weariness. And then...I began to have these dreams. I do not believe they were dreams, after all. I believe they were visions."

He told her about the dreams, and about the visit to the magician.

"And the woman was me?" RoZita said in wonder.

"Yes...although in the vision you were older, since according to the old man it was the year two-thousand in which you appeared."

"Two THOUSAND? Holy cow, I'd be in my FORties, I can't even begin to imagine being so ancient! How did I look? Grey hair and wrinkles and stuff? I must have looked like a hag-and you still sought me out?"

"A few grey hairs maybe - not enough to notice." She could hear a smile in his voice. "And absolutely no wrinkles. Your hair was darker. But not grey. And you were, ah, a bit plumper..."

"Shoot, I might have known I'd get fat...oh rats!" she groaned.

"Not SO fat." She heard the smile again. "And you were no hag. To me you were lovely. It was not merely your physical features as your, your aspect. Your face was all wistful, dreaming, as though you saw what others could not. As though you saw beyond the greyness of reality and perceived the colors behind the wall. You saw gardens where others saw only waste, or did not bother to look at all. It gave me hope. And so I determined to find you. I do not know why I found you in the year 1980 instead of 2000, but I did."

"Do you think I look better now...Oh nuts, I shouldn't have asked. That was stupid. Don't even answer. I must really sound like a kid." She was glad he couldn't see her blush.

He laughed gently. "I am sure there is a reason I reached you in that year, and for us ending up in this time. There are reasons for everything. My Northman friend Herger once told me, 'You Arabs wish to have reasons for everything. Your hearts are a great bursting bag of reasons.' Yes. I decided there was a reason for my having this vision, and there is a reason for it happening as it did. So I will question it no longer, but let things take their course."

When they finally reached the waterfall and the cave, the women changed back into the men's clothing they had worn before coming out. The oriental costumes were really not very practical.

"I can sense his presence," Alejandro said with a shudder as he stood under the tree where Love had tethered his horse. "I see no signs of him but I can tell he has been here and violated the sanctity of this spot."

"How do you feel now?" Elena asked him.

"A little weak still...but better. I can think more clearly. It is so strange about the camel. I cannot get it out of my mind."

"Do you believe in former lives?" Elena said suddenly.

"No, I think not. Do you think that can account for..."

"The resemblance, and the dreams? I suppose it is possible. If a man can travel through time, who is to say that he cannot have more than one life?"

"Then-Ahmed is myself and I am Ahmed? No, that is impossible. WE are two very different men. I cannot believe it. No, no, no, no, no. That could never be." He shook his head in pitiable confusion, looking off at Ahmed and RoZita who had found the tent where they left it in the meadow.

"You are right. There must be some other reason." But Elena was not so sure.

Nestrelda told Willy about her own father as they rode along on the donkey. She said he was a bandit and a very mean man and when he was drunk he used to beat her and her mother and sisters and brothers. His idea of fun was to pour turpentine on a dog's or a cat's tail, and once he skinned a chained bear alive right in front of his family, and let it stagger about till it fell over dead. When he got killed in a barroom fight her mother threw a party to celebrate.

Willy listened in numb silence. He didn't know why she was telling him all this. He supposed she was trying to entertain him. But it was all pretty scary to him. At least, though, he was not the only one in the world with a bad father...

Nestrelda was a little frightened herself, as she rode in sight of the Love ranch.

"If you come to the house," Willy told her, "my mother might give you some money for returning me."

"I don't need no money," she said. "And I don't think she be happy to see me somehow." She could just imagine what Señora Love would have to say to her husband's former mistress.

She dropped the boy off at the front gate, which she had never been past. He looked up at her as she remounted the donkey for a moment.

"Goodbye, Nestrelda," he said. "I'm sorry I was so mean to you."

"Adios, Willy," she said softly.

"You're cool," he said, then ran through the gate without looking back, the bag he held over his shoulder flapping up and down on his back.

She sighed and rode off, wondering what would become of her now. All her old band dead, her lover gone, and what respectable people would want anything to do with her? None of them were Ahmed. They would never show her kindness or respect, nor would they ever forgive her and take her into their fold no matter what. She would always be an outcast.

Ahmed...He would never be hers either, he wanted that pale Anglo girl RoZita, who was prettier and smarter, and obviously came from better people. Through a crystal web of tears Nestrelda saw his unbelievably beautiful face, his jewel-like eyes, his trim, graceful body... She would go where he was. At least she could be near him. To look at him, hear his voice. To guard and defend him if necessary. What else could she do?

Without even thinking how dangerous it could be, she started off in the direction of the waterfall. She didn't know exactly where it was, but she figured if she stayed on this road long enough she would find it. She passed the lair where she had made her home for so long, wondering what the others would say when they saw her returning. They would not welcome her with open arms, she was sure…

And then she heard the sound of horses once more. Many horses.

It sounded like a whole platoon of them.

She dug her heels into the donkey's flanks to make him run. He trotted down the rutted road a piece, then stumbled and refused to run any more. She tried to steer him off the road into the woods, but the underbrush was too thick, he wouldn't go into it. She looked up at the sky as though pleading with the sun to tell her what to do now. But the sun was very low, almost setting. It would be dark soon. It was like a bad dream. She couldn't seem to go anywhere but straight ahead.

I must warn them, she thought aloud. I must ride on and tell him he is in danger. Carnal probably rode into town to round up some friends to help him. But what will I do...that may be them now, and a donkey cannot hope to outrun a horse?

She wasn't even sure how far she was from the cutthroats' lair. That was the first place they would go. He had seen the camel and he would lead the others there. Then what? When they found the camel gone, might they not follow its hoof prints to the waterfall?

Perhaps if she could get there and brush away the prints they would not be able to follow. Once again she dug her small dirty bare feet into the donkey's flanks but he would not run. She swore at him, then promised him nice treats, then sang him a little song that he liked, then threatened to swap him for a pony, but still he would plod on, as though he could not even hear her.

Finally she dismounted and abandoned him there, calling him a filthy name as she did so, then ran as fast as she could up the road. It was hard on her bare feet but she did not stop until she stepped in a big hole and twisted her ankle painfully, and fell into the road with a cry. She crouched there clutching her ankle, moaning and cursing. The stupid little donkey did not even come to see about her, he seemed in a bad mood and just ambled along. Nothing left to do but mount him again and ride, she couldn't walk now.

Whimpering a little, she limped over to him, seized his saddle and put her good foot into the stirrup and swung her badly hurting left leg over. But he still wouldn't run. Now she could hear the hoof beats, louder and closer. Many of them. More than just two horses, maybe five or six. Or more! It had to be him!

Desperately she grabbed at a limb from a low-hanging tree to use as a switch, but she couldn't break it off and she couldn't dismount because of her sprained ankle. She had a momentary image of Alejandro bound and helpless to the tree and wondered if God were punishing her for her part in that by keeping her donkey from running. It was a just punishment, what some would call poetic justice, she knew. But could He not see she had changed, that she was trying to do good, to try to save the man He had sent to save Zorro? Why did He not help her now?

"I did not mean to be so bad," she cried out, then stilled herself. Someone might hear her. It was not even true, she had meant to be bad much of the time. It was much easier to be bad than good when you were with bad people, and when good ones did not want you around. And being bad could be fun. She remembered this, that she had often enjoyed being mean, took pleasure in hurting others, in snitching things she didn't even need, in outwitting simple peasants and preening herself over stealing another woman's man from her. She would never enjoy such things again. She was not sure what had come over her. But her evil ways were behind her, and now God should show her the way to escape so she could save Alejandro and his twin brother once more...

Now she could hear men's voices and the horses were galloping now, their hoof beats were thunder from the pit of hell. And they were gaining on her, closer...

Finally the donkey became frightened and broke into a trot. But of course it was no match for even one horse, let alone several of them...suddenly she remembered the little pistol in her sash and she pulled that out with trembling fingers. Then hid it. If it were Carnal, she could use his son against him. Tell him she knew where Willy was. Perhaps she could control him that way...yes...

The horses rumbled closer. Looking over her shoulder, she could see them now. Nearly a dozen, and yes, there was Carnal on his brown and white horse leading, and alongside him on a fine bay stallion was a man she recognized as a cavalry officer, Lucas Hawkins, whom she knew by sight. Perhaps he wouldn't harm her, he seemed pretty friendly on the whole. But if Carnal blamed her for Alejandro's escape...


	13. Darkness Falling

~Chapter 9~

Ahmed lifted and carried Alejandro over to the small cave which smelled of horses and contained many small pallets, and laid him down on the nearest one. Elena tied Nestrelda, none too gently, to the nearly dead tree where Alejandro had been tied, persuading her to cooperate with the help of her pistol. As she bound Nestrelda's hands, the gypsy called her a name that was unspeakable in any language and spat at her. Elena raised a hand to strike her, then stopped herself.

"I would gladly slap you all the way to hell, you daughter of Beelzebub," she said, her beautiful face as cold and white as the moon, "but I am not like you. I am not one to do violence to people who are tied up, even when they are the spawn of demons."

Alejandro held onto Ahmed for a moment as the Arab set him down, shuddering, and Ahmed spoke to him gently, as he would to a frightened horse. He could hardly help noticing how warm Alejandro was.

Finally Ahmed whispered, "Thank you for saving my life." Alejandro nodded and Ahmed laid him on his side, feeling him for broken bones, a little sickened at the damage he saw. Whip marks back and front, a burn or two, bruises and deep scratches, lacerations, a couple of small puncture wounds. And in spite of it all he could still see the resemblance between Alejandro and himself. It was truly uncanny. Of all the strange things that had happened today, this was the strangest!

Elena ran to Alejandro, weeping, and threw herself down beside him. Ahmed rose and went to see about RoZita, who was now standing near the mouth of the cave. She still seemed stunned.

"Are you all right?" he asked her. "Let me see." He lifted her bloody hair in back to examine the wound. She winced a little but made no sound. "Does it hurt much?" he asked her.

"I can hardly feel it," she said. She was shaking all over. "Do you think he'll be OK? I think he has a high fever. We need to get him some cold water. He's liable to get dehydrated without it, and rum would only make him worse."

"I do not know," Ahmed said looking down at Alejandro, whom he could hardly see now for Elena leaning over him. "He is in a bad way. Why don't you sit down with them while I go to get some medicine supplies."

He led her into the cave with an arm around her and guided her to another of the pallets. Then he found a much larger blanket, probably Scourge's, judging from the size. Willy followed him to the body of the pirate, over which flies were beginning to congregate.

"Are you going to bury him?" Willy asked, wrinkling his snub nose.

"No. I am not strong enough to move him. All I can do is cover him."

"He stinks. And he's got bugs all over him."

"Yes." Ahmed covered the huge charred bloody body, trying not to be sick. Every muscle in his own body ached, especially his arm where Scourge had twisted it. If not for Alejandro, the brute would have broken it…just before cutting his throat.

"I hate him," Willy said. "He hurt me. When he grabbed my arm and started yanking me along. I'm glad he's dead." His lower lip quivered a little.

"He was a very bad man," Ahmed said with an inward shudder, thinking he had never seen anything that looked more monstrous, not even the Wendol. "He enjoyed hurting people. It was fun to him."

"Are you the real Zorro?" Willy asked. Ahmed looked at him, startled. He said you were," Willy explained, looking toward the small cave.

"He has a fever, perhaps he was delirious when he said that and did not know what he was saying. But he is the real Zorro."

"But you look like him. Are you his twin brother?"

"Perhaps." Ahmed decided that would be easier than explaining the truth to the boy. "Come with me to see my camel."

Willy followed him to where Fezeek was tied to a tree, nibbling at leaves. Ahmed untied him and spoke Arabic, so that the camel sank to his knees. Ahmed put Willy up on his hump and then climbed up in front of him, instructing him to hold on. They rode back to the overhang where they dismounted and tethered Fezeek to another tree. Then Ahmed took a bag hanging from the animal's saddle. Willy looked over at Nestrelda, who was staring at the camel in disbelief.

"I hate her too," Willy said, plenty loud enough for the gypsy to hear. "She is a bitch." He stooped and picked up a rock to throw at her. Ahmed grabbed his wrist and made him drop the stone.

"You must never say that word about any woman, Willy," he said sternly. "Women are to be respected always. They are the source of all human life, including your own."

Willy stared at him uncomprehendingly, then pouted.

"I want to go home. He promised to take me."

"We cannot take you just now, Willy. Later we will find a way to take you home. But just now it is impossible."

"But he promised me. And I want to go."

"I understand, my child. But he was ill when he said it. Sometimes when people are ill they do not know what they are saying. He is more ill now, and may die. Please try to think of someone besides yourself for a while, Willy."

The boy gave him the goggle-eyed stare of someone who has just been presented with a totally foreign concept.

But he said nothing. He followed the Arab into the small cave, where Ahmed opened the bag and took out several bottles and jars. He pulled the stoppers of several, and settled on one, which he handed to Elena.

"This is salve made from cactus and balm and aloe. Put that on his wounds," he said. Turning to RoZita, he said, "Let me examine that cut once more."

He put something on it that stung at first but began to soothe after a minute or two. Gently he stroked her hair over the cut. She sniffled a little, then looked at Alejandro with concern.

"We should get him near some cold water," she said. "We need to get his fever down. Elena, do you know if there is a body of cold water nearby?"

"I am unfamiliar with this area," Elena said as she doctored the whip marks on his back. "The only stream I know of is near where we started - at our waterfall."

"We should get him there," RoZita said. "It could be dangerous here - that other man he was talking about may come back here. But how can we? He can't ride, can he?"

"Perhaps Ahmed could hold him up on the camel, and you and the boy could ride with me on Tornado. But what do we do with her? We can hardly leave her here, she may escape, and she could be dangerous."

"Maybe one of them has a wagon or something," RoZita said. "I think I saw one out there somewhere. We could take him in that. I want to leave here too. It's…creepy. I sure don't want to spend the night here, with all those dead bodies lying around - yuck. We can tie her and put her in the wagon with him."

"I don't want her anywhere near him," Elena said icily.

"Well, we could tie a rope to her and make her walk behind Fezeek. We couldn't go very fast anyway."

"Very well then," Elena said, "I believe you are right. You are sure there is a wagon? I do not think Tornado is used to pulling wagons, and he is too excitable, but there are other horses here, I see. Perhaps they could be hitched to one."

"I'll go see. I'm not absolutely sure, it was a long ways off, and we were-sort of occupied. But I'll double check."

Alejandro moaned a little, whispering the word "Agua." Elena leaned over to hear him.

"He needs water," RoZita said again. "He'll get dehydrated if we don't get him some. Rum would only make him thirstier, I think. We'd better ask her where to get water." She made a little face at the prospect of having to ask Nestrelda anything.

"If she gives you any trouble," Elena said through clenched teeth, "just tell me. I can be very persuasive, I assure you."

She heard a sob from Alejandro, and bent down to him with tears springing into her own eyes.

"What is it, mi amor?" she whispered.

"I want to go away from here," he said, sounding as much a child as Willy, reaching up a hot hand to touch her cheek. "This is a terrible place. I will die here."

"I want to leave too," Elena said, a couple of tears escaping her eyes as she took his hand in both hers and kissed it. "We will go as soon as we can find you some water."

"Who is that man who looks like me?" he whispered as she kissed his hand over and over.

"I do not know," she said, smoothing back the curls from his forehead. "Do not talk now, my darling. Save your strength. Just let us take care of you."

RoZita stopped short as she saw no sign of Nestrelda, and she gasped thinking the gypsy had escaped. Then she saw that Nestrelda had been tied to a different tree, one with much more shade. Ahmed had moved her, of course.

He is just too kind, RoZita thought with a little glow inside…no, it was much too soon to be in love, she had known him for less than two hours, surely. Even if he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and the kindest and bravest, of course it was much too soon…

Smiling, she went to where she thought she had seen the wagon, and yes, it was there. The mule was even still tied to it, looking very bored. Then she saw Ahmed coming with Willy.

She told him of their wish to be moved as Willy, feeling the effects of the fruit he had gorged himself on earlier, darted off to a stand of bushes to relieve himself. They walked slowly to the cave, when suddenly Nestrelda's voice startled them.

"You must not go to the waterfall," she hissed at them. They turned to stare at her. "HE is there. He is waiting for Señorita Montero so he could bring her here."

"What are you saying?" Ahmed moved nearer to the gypsy, and saw that she was crying a little.

"Carnal Love," she said sniffling and lowering her voice. "If you go there, he will lie in ambush and kill all of you. He was going to bring Elena here so he could have his way with her before he killed Alejandro in revenge for the death of his brother. And you must leave here before he comes back or he will kill all of us. I know a place you can go where he will not find you. There is water there, too."

"Why are you telling us this?" Ahmed said. "Are you not on his side?"

Elena, hearing the conversation, emerged from the cave, incredulous and distrusting. Nestrelda swallowed and wiped her eyes and nose on the ropes that bound her hands before she spoke.

"You would not let that boy throw the stone at me," she said, "and you told him to treat me with respect. And you moved me into the shade. No man has ever treated me with respect or kindness before. No man ever treated me like anything but a whore."

"Is that so?" Elena said coldly. "Well, I am not surprised. People usually get treated the way they act. When one acts like a lady, one gets treated like a lady. When one acts like a whore, one gets treated like a -"

"Elena," Ahmed looked sternly at her.

"I never knew how to act like a lady," Nestrelda said defensively, but without sullenness. "No one ever show me. But you must not go to the waterfall. If you do, he will kill you all, and he will come back here and kill us if we stay. I know where we can go. There is a stream of cold water and a rock shelter. I go there sometimes . . . when I want to be by myself."

"This is all an act," Elena said. "Why should we trust her? She may be trying to lead us into a trap."

RoZita thought to herself that if this were an act, then Nestrelda was one hell of a fine actress. The tears were real.

Ahmed said, "She may be telling the truth. And it IS dangerous to stay here. There may be more men where the others came from, and they may slip in and kill us."

"We cannot take horses," Nestrelda said. "Or the camel. The way is too narrow. We can walk it, is less than half a mile."

"How will we move Alejandro?" Elena said with a glance back toward the cave. "Ahmed, you cannot carry him that distance? Would he not be too heavy?"

"I have an idea," RoZita said. "I saw a bunch of bamboo poles in the cave. We can tie those together and make a stretcher."

"We can take my donkey," Nestrelda said. "We can load food and weapons on him, and the boy could ride him."

Fifteen minutes later, Ahmed and RoZita were in the lead on the path bearing the crudely constructed stretcher, the donkey following close behind with Willy astride, looking both frightened and proud of himself, while Elena brought up the rear carefully guarding Nestrelda lest the gypsy prove treacherous.

It was downhill most of the way. In the distance they heard the stream and smelled the freshness of the water. It was a beautiful place, with ferns and palmettos and flowering vines growing luxuriantly. A rock ledge on the other side of the stream provided some shelter. They waded across the shallow water, then laid Alejandro down beneath the rock ledge on a bed of soft sand and brought him a drink of cold water in a jug they had tied onto the donkey. He absorbed it like a sponge. RoZita soaked a blanket and laid it over him.

"What are you doing?" Elena gasped.

"We have to bring his fever down," RoZita explained. "To do that we have to keep cold water on him. If we don't, his temperature will keep rising."

"You are a nurse?"

"No, but I come from a medically minded family."

The cold blanket seemed soothing to Alejandro. Elena sat down with him once more. RoZita brought him and Elena a couple of beautiful and fragrant white flowers and some ferns that grew nearby, thinking perhaps they would help him to forget some of the events of the day and concentrate on getting well. Then she went to where Ahmed and Nestrelda were tending to the donkey, unloading the food and medicinal supplies and guns. Stooping down beside the stream, she wet a rag and scrubbed at the paint on her face. Tears gathered into her eyes and spilled over before she could stop them. Everything was just so overwhelming, she could hardly begin to comprehend it.

"Are you all right?" she heard Ahmed's voice say behind her. She started, hastily wiping her face, not wanting him to see her like this.

"Just cleaning this goop off," she snuffled. "I must look like a raccoon by now."

"You can be quite proud," he said, kneeling down on the bank of the stream beside her, laying a hand on her shoulder. It produced a powerful feeling in her. "You are brave and clever and resourceful. Today has been a wonderful day."

"Yes," she said, "you're right. This has been the big mama of crazy days…and yet, it's been the greatest day of my whole life. You know what all this reminds me of? This really old, OLD movie I saw called 'The Sheik.' The Sheik of Araby - his name was Ahmed too - is in love with this English girl and he abducts her intending to make her fall for him, which of course she does seeing as how he's Rudolph Valentino…"

She broke off, knowing he hadn't a clue who Rudolph Valentino was, or a movie either.

"A movie…that is what you watch on the magic box?" he asked. "Like a play, but without the stage, only in the box?"

"Something like that. And Rudolph Valentino was an actor. In this movie the dumb twit he abducts spends the first half of the movie resisting his advances, even though he's like totally dreamboat city, and he does everything short of tying her to the bed to make her fall in love with him, but finally she flips over him after she thinks he might be killed. . . ."

She hardly dared look him in the face, telling herself once more it was too soon to be in love, that what she actually felt was a mixture of admiration, protectiveness, respect, tenderness, gratitude...and pure-dee animal lust. She wanted to pounce on him like a tigress and wrestle him to the ground, then she wanted to take a stick and write, "Ahmed, I love you!" in the sand just like the girl in the movie. And kiss him over and over, and lie in his arms until dawn…

Less than a mile away, Carnal Love waited for Elena, fuming.

He found something draped over a tree, some kind of black robe with pretty gold-edged designs on it, birds and trees, maybe it was hers? Looked kind of Japanese, although at the back of the neck he saw a small tag marked Dillards - whatever that meant, it didn't sound very Japanese. There were signs of upheaval, branches littering the meadow grass, which was scorched in a couple of places, and one or two of those strange droppings he'd seen on the road…but Elena was not to be seen.

In frustration Carnal Love poked around the trysting place, silently willing her to show, talking to his horse, snapping at branches with his sword in frustration and cursing. He thought about her eyes, her long black hair, her creamy skin and crimson lips, how her soft body would feel clasped against his. She was a spirited creature, and he liked that. He pictured the look on Murieta's face when he had his way with her in front of him before dispatching the bandit once and for all. Then Elena would be his slave... Maybe he wouldn't kill Alejandro after all, just hold him prisoner and get what he wanted from her in exchange for keeping Murieta alive. Maybe that would be even better than killing him, certainly be more fun…

But where in the hell was she?

He sighed, lit a cigar and sat down on a stone, then noticed something. The whinny of a horse that was not his own. It seemed to be coming from under the ground.


	14. Haunting

~Chapter 14~

"Sounds kinda like a tree falling," Hawk remarked. "Cain't hardly tell what direction it come from though. Tell you what, it's gettin' dark. What say we camp out here and wait till mornin' to continue?"

Carnal Love was ready to bluster but he saw that maybe Hawk was right. If it got dark they wouldn't hardly be able to see what they were doing. He was a little scared, however, about camping here. Too many dead bodies. And Nestrelda was uncomfortably close by. Love believed in ghosts, although he would have denied it if anybody asked him. But he couldn't very well show the white feather to Hawk.

Corporal Tommy Barton was terrified. It was easy to believe in ghosts out here in the wilderness, with a fresh body bleeding not far away.

"Shouldn't we c-c-camp somewhere else?" he stammered, trying not to betray his fear but failing miserably. "There could be all kinds of dangerous m-m-men l-lurking around here."

Some of the others looked as though they agreed, although they didn't say so.

"We'll camp here," Hawk declared. "We're soldiers, ain't we, with the U.S. Cavalry. Ain't nobody gonna mess around with us! If any of you mama's boys want to tuck your tails 'tween your legs and scurry on back to the fort, feel free to do it now. We don't need no weak-kneed yeller-bellies pissin' their pants and jumpin' at their shadders. We need REAL men, right, Carnal?"

"Right," Love said as firmly as he could with his dry mouth. With that the men dismounted and began leading their horses into the small cave to prepare for the night.

Barton saw his chance to leave. To turn back and try to make a clean slate. But with Hawk's piercing grey eyes upon him in the dusk, he could not quite bring himself. And the thought of riding down that road alone in the dark was just as frightening as the idea of camping out here with God knows what roaming around. He would be a real man. He was here to help rescue a child, after all, wasn't he? He would forget Nestrelda. What was she but a dirty gypsy, after all? A thief and a whore and a kidnapper. She deserved what she got. He would keep reminding himself of that.

At the same time he wondered if any woman would ever kill herself to keep from betraying him. Any woman besides his mother, that is.

~O~O~

"Enough," Alejandro put aside the guitar. "We make too much noise in this silent evening forest. They may be looking for us."

"They will not get past that tree in the night, surely," Elena said. "But you are right. We must try to sleep now."

Alejandro put on the robe he had been wearing earlier, for the silky fabric was soothing to his injured skin. Elena put more of the aloe salve on him, and Ahmed gave him another drink of the opium drug. RoZita found her discarded caftan and put that on without removing her underwear, feeling shy of sleeping beside Ahmed with nothing on under the garment. Elena put on a plain flannel gown from her trunk.

Ahmed lay down with his pants on but not his shirt. Alejandro and Elena lay down on one side of the tent snuggled up together. Ahmed lay between the couple and RoZita, all of them covered with thick quilts against the night air, which was a bit chilly although it was late spring. There was a space of about a foot between them.

Alejandro clung to Elena to protect himself from the barrage of memory, waiting for Ahmed's drug to take effect. So much had happened in the day, his capture seemed to have taken place long before. But the memory of it was clear enough. His illness, the men coming at him from every side, Scourge knocking him nearly unconscious with the butt of his rifle - Alejandro was certain it had been the pirate, although it could well have been any of them - mocking laughter, shouts, curses...his own helplessness, tied to the tree, hearing Love talk of bringing Elena...he shivered uncontrollably. He tried to think of Elena curled so softly beside him, the faint scent of her hair, her arm draped over his chest, her regular breathing, her impending motherhood, and tried his best not to picture her talking with Scourge. He would never be able to wipe out that memory.

He tried to think of Ahmed on his other side, his mysterious brave and wise double, sent from heaven or wherever to rescue him…surely his life and his fate were important, for this to happen. It was that he should think of now, not the events of the day. He reached over and touched the other man through the quilt that covered him, supposing him to be asleep, but Ahmed took his hand and clasped it, and feeling the coldness of it, gave it a reassuring squeeze.

And the drug took over and Alejandro drifted off, listening to Elena's breathing and the softly chiming sounds of the forest…

But RoZita could not sleep.

~O~O~

Carnal Love lay flat on his back in the small cave, listening to Hawk snoring. Even Corporal Barton had managed to drift off, although the boy didn't look any too peaceful in the light of the lantern that had been left burning in the midst of the men.

Love alternated between thinking of Willy and the glaring stains of his own soul, of the circumstances that had brought him to this day. Of his own destiny, what lay in wait for him. All he could see was an unending blackness, a canyon of nothingness, gaping before him, waiting to swallow him like a shark gulping down a minnow... He sat up and groped for the canteen of brandy that would perhaps help him escape his tormenting thoughts. There was only a little left. Maybe Scourge had stashed some rum somewhere...

He stumbled to his feet to go investigate, when he saw someone standing in the mouth of the cave, and his mouth opened wide in a soundless scream.

It was Nestrelda.

She stood with the knife sticking in her breast, blood blackly soaking her blouse and skirt. She didn't look the way Love thought of ghosts, he couldn't see through her and she did not look paler than usual. She looked the way he remembered her but for her expression, which was totally blank. She was looking straight at him. But in her unblinking eyes lay a black and silent nothingness.

And even as Love stared, she began to glow with a faint greenish luminescence, like phosphorous, and to give off a putrescent odor that grew stronger as he watched. Then, she began to decay right before his very eyes until nothing but a skeleton stood before him, with only the eyes left in the sockets of the skull, the whites obliterated by the blackness of the irises, her blood-soaked clothing hanging in tatters on the bones.

Love shrieked as though he were on fire, backing up and tripping over the men who lay behind him. They jerked awake, scrambling about in consternation, and Corporal Barton scurried backwards knocking over the lantern. Then they had their work putting out the fire, while Carnal Love cowered in the back of the cave where the frightened horses reared and whinnied.

"What in the all-fired blue blazes is goin' on here?" Hawk yelled after they managed to extinguish the flames. Two or three men were badly burned and they hunched up moaning and cussing or scuffling about for water. Hawk, at least, had had enough presence of mind to save some of the fire. He held up a stick with the end burning.

Love finally crept out again. He couldn't see the ghost or anything else now, and evidently no one else had seen it either. Except, possibly, Corporal Barton, who was huddled up whimpering. Hawk patted his shoulder.

"Hey there, baby boy, it's all right," he said in a half-joking way. "Somebody had a nightmare, is all. Musta been a doozy too. Was it you, Carnal? You got a witch on your back hollerin' giddyup?"

"It was me," Love managed to say, at last. He wondered what the next step was. Just to go totally mad? It was greatly tempting. Just to give over and go crazy as a betsy-bug.

Maybe it WAS a dream. Didn't really matter, though. Nightmare or ghost, whatever had just visited him had taken up residence in what passed for his soul, and there would be no evicting it.

~O~O~

RoZita figured Alejandro and Elena had drifted peacefully off together. She was not sure about Ahmed; she didn't think he was asleep, from the sound of his breathing. The events of the day circulated in her mind, starting with her meeting with Ahmed. Vainly she tried to remember what she'd been doing before she found herself on her back before him, but for the life of her she could not remember, other than the blinding flash. She almost could not remember anything that had ever happened to her before then. It was as if she had only been born today.

She remembered seeing him standing naked before her like some mythological god, and now she wanted to see him that way again. She wanted it badly. She wanted to touch him, run her fingers lightly over his sweaty, warm body, starting with his throat and shoulders, then down the length of his arms, stroking the hair lightly, and back up again. Then she would massage his chest and belly, and kiss his chest also, and move her palms down over his narrow hips and then grab his butt and squeeze…then she would wrap herself around him like a python and kiss him over and over...she would bite him...

She sat up, unable to lie down any longer. She was a bit frightened, both of her own lustful thoughts and of what might happen. No, she told herself, they could not get past that tree. They wouldn't be able to see in the dark, even with lanterns, and they wouldn't know where to look. The tent was too sheltered in this stand of trees, they had made sure that it would not be visible to any intruders, and the animals were hidden as well...

She had a feeling Ahmed was still awake, and she almost involuntarily moved closer to him, under the quilt. Then she felt his hand on her shoulder.

She almost jumped out of her skin. But she didn't move away or make a sound other than a little gasp. After a moment she laid her hand timidly over his. She felt it move down over the length of her arm and back up again, then felt his lips on the side of her neck, and she thought her heart would stop beating. His hand slipped up under the sleeve of her caftan and clasped her shoulder, squeezing a little, and her breath came in quick little gasps, as he kissed behind her ear. After a long moment's hesitation, in which she thought the earth had stopped turning, his hand pushed aside the camisole and cupped her right breast. She thought she would swoon there and then, lying down.

"To the cave?" he whispered.

They tried not to make too much noise, both from fear of waking Alejandro and Elena, and of attracting possible enemies. But it was extremely difficult, with the moonlight coming through the hole in the cave ceiling...a few candles burned nearby casting a warm vanilla light over their bodies. She saw him the way she had first seen him, looking even more beautiful in the moonlight and candlelight, otherworldly, almost. She felt jealous of the light because it kissed his body so beautifully, and she came between him and it so she could do the kissing instead. He had put on the scent again, and it drove her simply mad with desire and she said things that both made him laugh and excited him wildly, eagerly doing things she'd always had to be coaxed to do before, and he did things to her, until there was no patch of skin on either of them left unkissed and untasted. Then they merged into a slippery embrace so that the tiniest particle of light could not come between them. But the air around them was full of fire and poetry and gold. She found herself singing a hymn.

And she called him her little Arabian stallion.

~O~O~

And then the night air was shattered by a high, terrible cry from outside. Like a cougar when it has been shot in the belly.

Alejandro could not seem to mount his horse or find his sword. The footsteps came closer, closer, and a huge tattooed bald head, big as the sun, came bouncing down the road, like a giant ball, now it was rolling in the dust, and Alejandro tried to scramble out of its way, and the huge mouth laughed and bellowed and belched fire that sounded like the popping of many whips...

"Alejandro!" Elena's voice calling frantically, her soft hands pulling at him, her loose hair falling on his face. Alejandro gasped like a landed fish, and her arms went all around him, her voice asking if he were all right. He clung to her so tight he feared he would crush all her bones, but he could not let go for a long, long moment.

"Elena. My Elena," he repeated over and over as she stroked his hair.

"It's all right Alejandro. You have been dreaming, that is all. You are with me now, and everything is all right." Already she sounded like a mother.

Alejandro shuddered for a long time as she kissed him all over his face. Then he felt her hand slip into his robe and touch his chest.

Then they both started at the sound of footsteps outside, and saw that Ahmed and RoZita were no longer there. Alejandro scrambled for his sword, which lay under his pillow. In a moment the tent flap was pulled aside and there stooped Ahmed, holding a small torch. His face had an eerie glistening beauty in the dim firelight, and his hair looked damp.

"Is a terrible thing happening?" he asked.

~O~O~

Ahmed found RoZita standing outside the mouth of the cave holding a candle, a sheet wrapped around her, looking a little like a Vestal priestess, waiting for him.

"It is all right now," he reassured her with a big smile, taking her hand to lead her back into the cave...

After the next hungry kiss Elena wanted to feel Alejandro completely inside her. Carefully she sat on top of him and started to guide him in but Alejandro hesitated, asking: "What about the baby? Will it hurt it?"

Elena smiled down at him in the candlelight and kissed him gently on the lips: "The baby will like it!" She opened her legs and helped him to slide slowly into her. With a deep sigh she laid down on him caressing the whip wounds with her tongue. She pressed and rubbed her breasts and her hard nipples up and down on his sweaty body in the same rhythm as he thrust his body carefully into hers. Oh it was such an incredible sensation! She licked the throbbing vein on his neck and he turned her over and lay her on the back whispering: "Oh my Dearest, I've miss you so much...I love you, you are my life…"

Elena pulled his head down sighing: "My Alejandro...I was so worried about you...I love you, love you…" They kissed, lay silent for a moment and only kissed passionately. He was deep and hard in her body. She enjoyed this feeling and slowly she began to move wrapping her legs tightly around his slim hips, pressing her fingers against his smooth buttocks to show him he need not be worried about the baby. Alejandro moaned and started to thrust fast and faster, hard and wild into her hot wet body.

She burned now. She shuddered and squirmed beneath him sobbing with sensuous pleasure: "Don't. Stop. I love you!" And by the next deep thrust: "Oh my god Alejandroooooo!" She bit him almost in his neck as the wave of passion overwhelmed her and he with a deep moaning: "Oh my love" jerking several times inside her.

~O~O~

Carnal Love slept fitfully. Nestrelda visited his dreams, sometimes in her living form, sometimes in her skeletal one. Scourge loomed above, laughing, and his tattoos laughed too, springing out of his head and arms in obscene and painted mockery.

Some of the other men had nightmares as well, especially Tommy Barton, and when the dawn finally came, the young corporal was gone. His horse was still there, but not a trace of the young man remained. He was later found wandering about the woods by some Mexican peasants, gibbering out of his mind. They were afraid and let him go, and he stumbled off deep into the mountains never to be found again.

There were no food supplies remaining in the cave, so Hawk shot a good-sized pheasant and roasted it for breakfast. Love had no appetite. He nibbled at a piece of meat Hawk nearly forced on him but never noticed what it tasted like.

"You still want to do this?" Hawk said, squatting down watching him eat. "'Course, if you don't wanna find your boy…"

He looked meaningly at his friend. The others looked as though they had totally lost interest in this mission. Hawk seemed to be the only one with presence of mind.

Love could see he had no real interest in finding Willy. It was Zorro Hawk wanted. Not that he had anything against Murieta, he just wanted to be renowned as the man who captured The Fox. He wanted to be The Legend, himself. The idea of somebody else getting all the glory galled him. He wanted to be the Daniel Boone of California.

Love found this profoundly annoying.

"I'm goin' after Willy," he said, pushing his hair off his forehead and thinking he wouldn't mind being known as the man who killed Zorro, himself. Then he scratched the stubble on his own face, which itched. "No haint is gonna keep me from gettin' my boy back."

And he felt his resolve returning. Nestrelda could haunt him all she liked, what else could she do? He was alive, and she was dead. She had no power over him.

"Now yer talkin', Carnal!" Hawk boomed, slapping him on the back. He had a stubble of salt-and-pepper beard but looked cocky as ever. The bastard wasn't human, Love thought dully, feeling slightly nauseous. He could sleep anywhere, no ghost would ever molest him. Corporal Barton's fate did not trouble him in the least. The boy must have seen Nestrelda too, thought Love. She wasn't no dream, after all.

It was mid morning before the men were ready to ride out to the waterfall. Hawk said, as they saddled up their horses, "You still got eyes for the fair Señorita Montero, Carnal?"

Love looked at him bleary eyed. He had nearly lost interest in Elena. But there was something about the way Hawk spoke about her that struck a spark in him.

"Mostly I just want to get my boy back, and get the son of a bitch that killed my brother," he said. "But..."

"Reason I asked," said Hawk, "is cuz if you don't want her, I'd be mightily interested in gettin' a piece for myself."

"Tell you what," Love said, "we can share and share alike, can't we?" He felt a spasm of jealousy all of a sudden. But he knew he had to keep on Hawk's good side. "And what about the other gal? Didn't you say there was another one? Did she look good?"

"Didn't see her myself, but Rube LaFollette said she had nice titties." Hawk winked. "If there's two gals, all the better. We can all share 'em around, right, fellers?"

He turned and grinned at the other men. They grinned back, glancing at each other a little nervously, shuffling their feet.

"Well, let's get movin', we're wastin' time with all this chitchat," Love said, rising and going to where his horse was tied up. "How many of us we got left, anyway?"

Hawk glanced at the small company, counting heads. It seemed like more men than there really were.

"Countin' us - thirteen," he said.


	15. The Four Musketeers

~Chapter 15~

"Alejandro, you look troubled, what is it?"

Elena stood outside the tent, braiding her hair. Alejandro approached, dabbing absently at his wet black curls with a small towel, peering over at Ahmed who sat against a tree trunk near the tent writing on a sheet of paper. Alejandro's face was still badly bruised but the swelling had gone down.

"Something is amiss with him," he said, lowering his voice.

"Amiss with him? How do you mean?"

"We were bathing, as you know, and I could not help but notice…" He didn't look directly at her.

"Yes?"

It was a moment before Alejandro answered. Then, lowering his voice still more, he said with another sidelong glance at the Arab, "He lacks...a foreskin. I am so outraged! Who could have done such a thing to him, and why? Perhaps it was those savages he fell in with when he-why are you smiling?"

RoZita emerged from the tent and crept up behind Ahmed as he wrote. He must have found the pen and paper in the cave, she thought. She tried to peek at what he was writing but it was in Arabic and she could read none of it. She smiled to herself, went off into the brush to answer the call of nature, and then went into the cave to wash and dress and primp a little. She put on some of the makeup in the bag, but only a tiny bit, then tried to think what to do with her hair. It didn't look very good, she fretted, looking into the hand mirror and thinking of Elena's splendid sable tresses - this expression making her giggle a little at the same time, it sounded so Victorian. But she had no curling iron and no shampoo or hairspray, just a comb, and so she put her hair in braids. Then she thought of Ahmed once more, of the night they had passed, and smiled to herself, and as she did she caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror, softly radiant.

"You're beautiful," she gasped, and then kissed her reflection quickly, leaving a melon-colored smear on the glass. She then returned and peeked once more at what he was writing as though expecting him to have translated it into English. He had written a lot more.

"It is a poem for you," he explained to her with a very sweet smile. "Listen…" He cleared his throat and began to read almost shyly:

_Captive of dawn, chained with links of fire_

_Lying spread on the forest floor,_

_your eyes full of moss and pearls_

_your voice full of water,_

_your hair in love with the sun..._

_You spoke and the sky did listen,_

_You sang and my soul burst free,_

_You danced and my heart was your partner_

_You fought and I was your prisoner;_

_I crave your colors, I long for your face,_

_I want to swim in your voice, be lost in your forest_

_Fetter me to your arms, O captive of dawn!_

"I will try to make it better later on," he said, then caught his breath when he saw tears on her face. "What is it? Did I say something wrong?"

"No one ever wrote a poem for me before," she said, wiping her face with her forearm in a childish way.

~O~O~

"Goddammit," Carnal Love said. "Will you look at that!"

He rode ahead of everyone else, and so he was the first to see the tree barricading the road to the waterfall.

"Jesus," Hawk said, looking rather stupid. "Well. That sure complicates things, don't it?"

"So what the hell do we do now? Go around it?"

"We can't do that with the hosses. And we can't leave the hosses here. They could get stole. All kindsa riffraff could be lurkin' around. You know any other roads leadin' here, Carnal?"

"No...Jesus Christ. This is a piece of shit."

"They must be here," Hawk said suddenly. "Maybe that's what we heard last night. It was that goddamn tree fallin'. Carnal-I'm tellin' ya-they're here! I can smell wood burnin' and I can see smoke!"

Ahmed put his arms around RoZita. "You liked my poem?" he said.

"Don't ever change a word," she said in a muffled voice against his shoulder. "It's perfect the way it is."

He pressed his lips against hers. Her arms twined around his neck. He felt stiff and sore everywhere, but the feel of her arms and lips and body made him forget any discomfort.

Alejandro managed to gig up a big fish to cook for breakfast, and he was the one who cooked it. He felt even more stiff and sore than Ahmed, but he was in good spirits. He sang as he gutted the fish and Ahmed built the fire.

"Do you miss your family and friends?" Elena asked RoZita as they gathered sticks for the fire.

RoZita looked thoughtful. "They do not exist," she said after a moment. "That's so weird. They've never been born. Time has gone backwards for me and forward for Ahmed. He died long ago and I haven't been born yet. So, we're both totally alone. It boggles my mind. I still can't take it in yet. I'm living in the time of my ancestors, and he's living in the time of his descendants."

The truth of her aloneness came to her full force. The day before, she had scarcely had time to think about it. But now...she could hardly keep from it. She had no family. Ahmed had no family. All they had was each other.

"So I and Alejandro are totally alone," Elena said, picking up a large chunk of wood and studying it before laying it in her basket. "We have both lost our families, and all we have is each other. A strange coincidence."

RoZita was hardly listening to her. She stared all around her at the trees and meadows, the waterfall.

"I WAS born yesterday," she said in a small, stunned voice.

Elena felt her sadness and took her in her arms. The women held each other for a few moments, then Elena said, "You know, when we met first I thought you were a little bit crazy…

"I thought the same about you," RoZita said with a sad little smile. "I thought you were like, totally wacko or something. Actually, I thought maybe we were both nuts."

"Please forgive my indignant behavior. But I was so terribly worried about Alejandro." Elena sighed: "Thanks for your help to release him. You are a wonderful woman. I can never thank you enough."

"You too," RoZita said shyly. "And...so beautiful. I wish I looked anything like you."

"Ahmed seems to prefer you as you are." Elena smiled also.

~O~O~

Alejandro watched Ahmed stoke up the fire, bringing him a frying pan from the supply at the cave.

"Hermanito," he said, "I meant to ask when we were bathing, and I...became distracted. How many brothers have you?"

"Three," Ahmed said. "All of them older."

"None younger?"

"No, I am the youngest. There is a period of five years between me and my next brother."

"No," Alejandro said. "You had a twin. Did you not?"

Ahmed jerked his head up to look at him, and saw that Alejandro looked deadly serious. A strange feeling prickled in his insides.

"Yes," he said after a long moment. "He died at birth. I had almost forgotten. How could you have known that?"

"I had my dream of the white camel again," Alejandro said. "It was clearer this time. You were there, and I was with you. We were twins. I believe I am that twin, reborn. At first, I thought perhaps I was you, or a descendant of yours. But we are two different men. So we could not be the same. But yes, I could be that twin."

"But you - my twin-died at birth. So how could you know of the camel?"

"They say twins have a special bond. Sometimes they can read each other's minds and souls. So, perhaps my soul was linked with yours through the ages, just as in our mother's womb. It boggles my mind, but I know not how else to account for the strangeness of these events. I believe that we were meant to be together, and through the magic, we found each other. I sometimes practice magic also. Of course, it is only silly tricks that I do, but still, it is another link between us."

Ahmed stood up a little shakily. He wore clean clothes now, white shirt and black pants, without the sash. Alejandro was likewise dressed in white shirt and black pants, and they both needed a shave.

"I believe you are right," Ahmed said, and they embraced each other.

~O~O~

"Now Carnal, we can't just go charging on in like Napoleon's army," Hawk reasoned. "They could be laying in ambush for us. We got to use our heads."

"You're right," Love said with a sigh. He wanted to go charging in. He kept picturing his son in their clutches, what they might be doing to the helpless boy. He wished he could at least sneak around and get a look, see if he could see Willy from here. He strained his ears trying to hear the boy's voice, but could hear nothing now. "I want to take a look," he told Hawk. "I just have to see if my boy's there. And what they might be doing to him. You'll wait for me, all right?"

"I'll go with you," Hawk said. "I want to get a peek at the ladies." He turned to his men, who looked a gloomy lot this morning, he thought. "You fellers will keep our hosses and wait. Got that?"

The two men slipped around the fallen tree. The underbrush obscured the waterfall from their view, but they could hear it, in the distance. They could smell the smoke but not see it. Brambles tore at their clothes and skin, but Love was determined.

"Careful," Hawk said. "They might can hear us. Let's get down on our bellies and crawl. Then if they fire at us they won't hit us."

Crawling wasn't easy. Love was glad he wasn't a snake. He thought to himself that he probably still wouldn't be able to see Willy, that they might have him tied up in the cave or something. IF he were still alive, that is. A gruesome scenario played in Love's mind. He was picturing them leaving the boy's head on his doorstep, the way they had left the pig's head. He felt slightly sick. He told himself the appearance of Nestrelda last night was making him crazy, giving him morbid fantasies. It wouldn't happen, he told himself. Even Murieta wouldn't do that. Then again...You never knew. There was no telling what Murieta could be capable of doing, after what had been done to him yesterday...

Hawk suddenly grabbed his arm, whispering, "Look!" Love looked, and could see two girls, walking arm in arm. They both wore men's clothes, which did little to disguise their obvious feminine charms.

Hawk gave a nearly inaudible whistle. One was one of those haughty sloe-eyed beauties men admired from afar but were deep down just the least bit afraid of, fearing them to be dangerous sirens or something. The shorter one, with her light brown hair in two braids making her look younger than she probably was, was one of those cuddly gal-next-door types you brought home to meet your mama...or at least, the kind your mama wished you'd bring home.

Hawk got a warm feeling thinking about his mama, who was running one of the finest whorehouses in San Francisco.

Carnal Love gave him a questioning look, then looked at the two young women. Elena was carrying a basket, and the two of them seemed engrossed in serious conversation. Serious, but not loud. Probably if the two men made a move, the girls would hear them. But no one else was in sight. However, if they captured the women now, what might happen to Willy?

Love was getting increasingly frustrated. He'd had no idea when he'd had Murieta captured yesterday that it would get so complicated. But as he watched the girls, a combination of lust and remembrance of Nestrelda's appearance last night began clouding his mind. He tried shaking his head to clear it. He didn't notice he was kneeling on poison ivy.

The two women moved out of his range of vision. Love swore under his breath.

"Now what?" he whispered. "I still can't see Willy. I don't want to let 'em out of my sight."

"There," Hawk whispered back. "I can see 'em now."

He pointed. Love could see them now, but only just, and from the back. They were headed toward the waterfall and the cave. The open meadow lay between them and the two men. There was no more brush to crawl through. They would be out in the open if they followed the women, and might make sitting ducks of themselves. Or walking ducks, or whatever.

"We can take the long way around the woods," Love said. "I know this place pretty well. Come on thisaway."

~O~O~

The women came back across the clearing, saw Ahmed and Alejandro embracing, smiled at each other and RoZita exclaimed in a whisper: "Look! I guess we four will be quite an unbeatable team?"

"The Four Musketeers," Elena laughed.

Ahmed wished he could clasp his twin more tightly but feared to hurt him. His estrangement from his older brothers had gone very hard with him. Now, being reunited with one of them was wonderful beyond imagining.

He told the others about his brothers, sitting on the log before the smoldering fire. Alejandro sat beside him and laid an arm around him gripping his shoulder tightly, partly because he sensed that Ahmed was sad about his brothers and partly in an unconscious attempt to prevent him from slipping away.

There was Kahlil, the oldest, who was brilliant, handsome, brave, and a natural leader. Once he had been Ahmed's hero, admired by all. Now he occupied a high position in the caliphate, and stopped at nothing to make others aware of his authority, even if innocent people died or became enslaved because of it, and he was not above using torture and beatings when it suited his purpose. Then there was Abdul, less handsome and less brave but quite intelligent, who had always been envious of Kahlil's charisma and strength, and used underhanded methods to undermine him. When they were together they would seem very cordial and convivial with each other, but you could sense the animosity between them in the sarcastic asides and subtle digs they took at each other, and Ahmed could hardly bear to be in the same room with them for long at a time.

Then there was Sayid, also very charming, and when he was alone with Ahmed he could be excellent company, witty, relaxed, voluble. But when he was around more powerful men he changed, almost unconsciously. He would make snide remarks and cruel jokes about his wife and children and servants in their presence as though they were not in the room and couldn't understand. When Ahmed took him to task about it, he would just laugh it off. "What would YOU know?" he would sneer. "You think because you have traveled all over the world that you are qualified to tell others how to live their lives? Is that what you think?" He said that often, in those patronizing tones: "Is that what you think?"

Olga used to tell Ahmed that his brothers were jealous of the esteem in which people held him, and above all they resented his goodness - people tended to resent what they lacked themselves. She said the people hated and feared his brothers even while appearing to adulate them, but Ahmed they truly loved. They knew he was on their side, that he was their champion. And his brothers knew it, therefore they hated him, and she was often afraid for him. Even losing some of their children in the cholera epidemic did nothing to soften them. Rather, it made them all the harder and crueler. It had been nearly three years since Ahmed had had any dealings with any of them.

Now, being with Alejandro, so uncomplicated, open and immediately lovable, was like stepping out of a room full of poisonous fumes and breathing sweet mountain air. Ahmed wondered how it would have been if his twin had lived instead of dying in infancy.

~O~O~

This time Love and Hawk could walk upright. They moved as quietly as possible, however. It took them the better part of twenty minutes to get within seeing distance of the waterfall. And it was then that they were able to see two men sitting side by side on a fallen log.

They were the same size and were dressed similarly, but Love could only see them from the back. They, too, seemed to be talking very seriously. The women came toward them and sat down with them, the dark one on one side and the lighter one on the other. At one point one man put his arm around the other. It looked an awful lot like Murieta, what Love could see of him. But who was the other?

Then suddenly they both sprang up laughing. They drew their swords from their belts and took a fencing stance, still laughing, and now that they were facing each other Love could see them in profile. He gasped, completely forgetting where he was.

"Almighty J-Jesus Christ," he stammered, "they're BOTH Murieta!"


	16. The Two Zorros

~Chapter 16~

Carnal Love thought his mind must be playing tricks on him. Nestrelda again, taking him over and making him crazy. He'd never be rid of that bitch...He looked almost helplessly at Hawk, then saw his friend gawking too.

"There IS two of 'em!" Hawk said. "Well, whup me with a greenstick. I didn't know Murieta was twins."

Then I ain't going crazy, thought Love with a twinge of relief. Twins. Well, that explained it.

"He's a damn good swordsman," Hawk said with grudging admiration. "I'll say that much for the bastard."

"It's crazy," Love said. "Just plain goddamn son-of-a-bitchin' crazy. Where's the hell's that twin been all this time?"

"Beats the crap outa me. Kinda spooky, ain't it."

"So what do we do now?"

"You know what, Carnal," Hawk said after a silent moment, "I don't think they got Willy. I don't see him nowhere."

"They got him," Love insisted. "In that cave maybe. Tied up and gagged."

Hawk had a notion that kid would need gagging, all right. He half grinned, turning his head away so his friend couldn't see.

"If he's still alive, that is," Love said through clenched teeth.

"It don't look to me like there's anybody else around," Hawk said. "Just them and the women. Maybe we can go back and take 'em all by surprise. We won't need no hosses."

"I want 'em took alive," Love said. He felt slightly feverish, for some reason. "You tell them men of yours, you hear? I don't want no harm comin' to my boy. And this time I'm gonna get Murieta's ass good, and that double of his too. He's gonna think we was pettin' him yesterday."

The two men headed back the way they had come. They found some of the men shooting craps in the road, bored with the long wait, a couple of others napping against tree trunks.

"If you high-rollers can put away the bones for a few minutes," Hawk said sternly, "we're all goin' for a nice leetle stroll in the woods. Come on, Daggett, wake up, you don't look so purty with your tater trap gappin' open like that, your tonsils are liable to scare the birds away. Come on, y'all, let's git crackin'!"

Ahmed's sword flew up into the air as Alejandro finally disarmed him. Both men were covered in sweat by now.

"You are unbelievable," Ahmed told him, smiling with wonder and pride. "You must teach me your moves."

Alejandro actually blushed a little. "I can do that much, and do it gladly," he said. "But we must go to the hacienda soon. We should not stay here."

The women sat on the log watching them resume the sword fight, as Alejandro demonstrated the first position to his twin, then the second, and Ahmed caught on with amazing speed and grace.

"Aren't they sexy?" RoZ whispered to Elena.

"'Sexy'?" Elena looked at her new friend with raised eyebrows.

RoZita giggled, "I mean…ahem…they ARE VERY GOOD LOOKING and you want to…" She was about to say "jump them" but feared Elena would think her unladylike. She just giggled again.

"...and you may kiss one of them instantly?" Elena laughed also.

"Yeeeaaahhh! That's it!" They both laughed and squealed uproariously like two schoolgirls.

In the meantime, both men moved to the edge of the back of the wide and deep part of the stream. Ahmed stood dangerously near the water and Alejandro attacked him fast and faster. The Arab made a step backwards and noticed that the ground under his feet began to slip. With a quick move he grabbed Alejandro's arm and together they both fell in the stream! They laughed again and embraced each other. Then they climbed out to take off their boots and shirts, and dived in again to retrieve their swords.

"Do we want?" Elena asked RoZita.

"I want," RoZita said, thinking how delicious her Ahmed looked with wet hair. She smiled blissfully. How beautiful both men were, frolicking like otters in the water, with the waterfall pouring barrels upon barrels of sunlit diamonds into the cold ripples behind them. Ahmed was the better swimmer, she noted proudly. She wondered how he'd learned to swim in the desert.

The women took off their outer clothing and waded into the wide part of the stream, shrieking over how cold it was. RoZita felt a little self-conscious with the wet underwear clinging to her, leaving nothing to the imagination. She tried to stay totally submerged, thinking to herself that she was more the prim and proper Victorian girl than Elena. Elena looked like a mermaid with her long black hair floating out behind her and the rainbowed water droplets on her face. RoZ hoped she herself looked half as lovely, but had a feeling she just looked like a wet cocker spaniel.

They scrubbed at themselves with sand, since there was no soap to wash with. RoZita fretted about the lack of deodorant, soap, toothpaste, shampoo, and other things she was used to. And she wondered once more about her family. Were they missing her? Or did they even exist? What happened to the century she had been snatched away from? Were things going on there now? Or was this century the only reality? Could she possibly prevent the horrific events that had happened in the 20th century from taking place, and how? Was there some sort of purpose for her being here? What was to be her destiny now?

Suddenly there began a funny water fight between Alejandro and Elena. RoZ was ripped outside her thoughts and she joined in the "fight" with Elena against the men until the Zorros overwhelmed their "enemies" and tied them with their strong arms. Alejandro and Elena kissed each other instantly deep and passionately with lots of tongue playing. Elena buried her fingers in the wet curls of her man.

RoZita was suddenly taken over by Ahmed from behind. His arms twined around her waist and then she felt his hard body pressed against her back as he kissed the nape of her neck.

"I love you," he whispered.

Carnal Love was itching like a hound, and it was driving him crazy. All down the front, from lying on his stomach in poison ivy. His arms, chest, belly, privates, thighs, knees, all covered with a hellish rash. At this point he just about wanted to kill Lucas Hawk . . . who was right behind him now, with the others following, probably snickering over Love's discomfort. To make things worse, he could hear Nestrelda taunting him, "You gonna lose, papito. You never gonna see your boy again. Zorro is gonna kick your ass and you gonna go straight to hell..." He swore silently at her and scratched his lower belly violently.

"I can see something now," Hawk whispered as they crept up in sight of the waterfall. He lifted a pistol but Love reached out and pushed it down.

"I done told you ten million times, I want 'em took alive," he snarled, digging his fingernails into his left armpit in a way that drew a snigger out of one of the men. Love glared in his direction and the sound was instantly silenced. "No telling what they're liable to do to my boy in retaliation if anything happens to one of 'em…what do you see?"

"Well, I'll be a suck-egg hound," Hawk said, lowering his spyglass and rubbing his eyes a bit. "It IS a goddamn white camel. Jee jumpin' hoshaphat, wherethehell you reckon it come from?"

"I don't care if it come from the devil's asshole," Love growled. "You see anything else?"

He snatched Hawk's spyglass and peered through it. Yep, there was the damn camel all right, facing their way, as it nibbled some leaves. Love had half a notion to shoot the mangy beast. He moved the spyglass to see if anything human was about. Then he detected some motion behind the trees...by the waterfall.

"Somebody's there, by crackies," he said with a triumphant little smirk, then bent to scratch the insides of his thighs vigorously.

"I love you too," RoZita said as Ahmed's hands twined around her waist. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Alejandro and Elena farther out in the middle of the stream, splashing each other and laughing. Ahmed and RoZita shared a long, long kiss in the cold water, which did not feel very cold any more...

"Come with me," he said after a few minutes. "I want to show you something."

He looked very serious so she followed him out of the water, feeling self-conscious in her dripping, clinging underwear, even though he had seen all there was to see of her the night before.

Near the tent he found her kimono and helped her slip it on. Then he put on his own robe and led her into the cave where he had stored all the bags. He took one and lifted a bottle from it. A very plain, dark ceramic bottle with a tight stopper.

"Do you see this?" he said. "This is what brought me to you. It is the potion from the magician. There is almost half left. You understand?"

She put back a wet hair strand. "Why are you showing me?" she asked, with a twinge of apprehension.

"There is enough to send you back into your century," he said, coming over to sit by her. "The problem is, I do not know enough about magic to make it work exactly right. The old magician is such a powerful one, it is only to be expected that something should go wrong with his methods. I think perhaps it was the fact that my twin was here that pulled me into this century instead of yours. The question is, do you want to go back into your time? You would perhaps be twenty years older than you are now…not that it matters to me, but would it matter to you?"

"But you would be separated from your twin," she said softly. "Would that not be unbearable for you?"

"It would be very hard," he admitted, "but you are more important to me now. I took you away from your world without your consent, so it is only right that I should bring you back to it. I want you to be happy, and would you be so separated from your world, cut off from your family and friends, from everything you have ever known? Could you possibly be happy here with me, knowing?"

"That's such a hard decision," she said, a hard knot forming in her throat. He went to her and put his arms around her.

"I could go with you," he said. "Then, at least we could be together."

She was silent for a long moment, except for her sniffling. He stroked back her wet hair.

"I can't be apart from you," she said with her voice trembling, "and I also can't tear you away from the only real family you have now. I have my memories of my family to sustain me, but do you have happy memories? On the other hand, they must be wondering where I am, what happened to me. It must be horrible for them."

"The people here need Zorro," Ahmed said. "So I could not think of asking him to come with us. Yes, these are hard decisions, almost impossible. I will come with you then. It is the best thing. Perhaps your family can be my family too, they must be wonderful…and about Alejandro..." he drew a deep breath, trying to control his voice, then said, "I knew him for this short time. The memory will sustain me. We will never be out of each other's thoughts. And perhaps someday we will be reunited. Miracles have happened already, they can happen again, yes? We have that hope."

"We need not leave right away," she said. "We can stay a little while longer. Just for a day or two, at least." She wiped a tear away.

"I do not know how much longer the magic will last," he said. He dabbed at her face with the sleeve of his robe. "Surely it is not indefinite. So it would best to wait for not more than three days."

"Then we'll stay a little longer," she said. "I guess I really owe it to my family to go back to them. If there were some way of letting them know where I was, then staying here wouldn't be quite such a big deal. Well, of course it WOULD be, but I could stand it. But I can't stand thinking of them agonizing over my disappearance. I have to go back."

"That is the right decision for you, I think," he said. "And I shall go with you."

"My parents will adore you," she said smiling through the tears. Then she wondered what they would think about his religion. They were strict Baptists. What would they think about her taking up with a man of the Moslem faith? She guessed they'd have to worry about that when the time came...

They made love for a while in the cave. Later they dressed and ate some of the fruit from the food supply bag that hung near the underground stream that ran through the cave.

And outside, Carnal Love's men were skulking through the forest like panthers...

Although Alejandro's whole body ached after the fight with Ahmed, he felt powerfully aroused as he looked at his black-haired "mermaid" and played with her in the water. Her laughter and her hard nipples he saw through the thin wet material of her underwear made him totally crazy. He was sooo addicted to her!

He pulled her close to his own body to feel her wet breasts pressed against him. The both breathed heavily and Elena twined her arms around his neck.

"My dearest, you are sooo beautiful," he whispered. They looked deep in each other's eyes for a long moment, then Alejandro took her face in his hands and began tenderly to kiss the water drops away from it. Elena closed her eyes and enjoyed those soft touches of his lips and tongue. Then she did the same and touched his wet face with her warm mouth. He sighed deeply and their lips met in a kiss full of hot desire. She felt his hardness against her belly and pressed herself more closely against him as she felt his hands caressing her behind under the water and they moved slowly between her thighs to a certain part that only HE knew. She shuddered in anticipation for that magical feeling that would overwhelm her soon.

She rubbed his iron hardness through his pants with her fingers. Fast and faster. Hard and harder. Still kissing, they swallowed each other's moaning as they came together to a deep strong climax.

Afterward they helped each other dress, wondering where Ahmed and RoZita had gotten off to. Alejandro helped Elena unbraid and comb out her wet hair, then said, "We must leave here soon. We will go to the hacienda."

"Will we just keep running away from them?" she said.

"No. I will find him myself. This will be no easy thing for me, since he is a father also. But he will never leave us alone otherwise. Being evil, he will stop at nothing to get at me, even if it means harming you and our child, or my brother and his lady. And I would never let any harm come to any of you. I will take you to the hacienda where you can be safe, then I will find him myself and dispatch him as soon as possible."

Ahmed and RoZita came from the cave hand in hand. They did not look happy, Elena noted with some apprehension. In fact, they looked sad.

"Come to the cave with us," Ahmed said. "We have something to tell you. And we must be where we can talk safely."

Carnal Love wondered if you had to be born stupid to be enlisted in the Cavalry, or if you just got that way from being in it after a while. He doubted if any of these morons of Hawk's could find their butts with both hands and a map. You just about had to show them which way was right, which way was left, which way was up, damn near. When Hawk told them to surround the cave, they just looked at each other with blank stares and then at him like he was talking through his ears while dancin' the hornpipe buck nekkid. Love reckoned they'd left their brains in their saddlebags.

And he had a feeling he didn't have much more sense than they did, to lay in poison ivy when he knew damn well what it looked like and everything. The front of his shirt was damp from where his rash had leaked on it from being scratched. Ugh.

Hawk said, "Damn it, Carnal, this business of takin' 'em alive just ain't gonna work. What happens if they got guns too?"

"You trap 'em. How hard can that be? They lured and trapped Scourge's men. Don't know how, but they had to of done it. If only I hadn't of posted that idiot Cochino as lookout. I figgered the weed-head was too stupid to be any use elsewhere, and he'd shoot at anything that moved. But somehow they managed to get past him. Ain't you got any tricks up them sleeves of yours, Lieutenant?"

"You know," Hawk said thoughtfully, "they used to say of the first Zorro, all you have to do to bring him is to mistreat a peasant and there he'd be. Reckon that 'ud work with Zorro the Second?"

"So what do we do, find us a peasant and mistreat him, and then Ol' Foxy would come a runnin'?"

"Shouldn't be too hard to do, should it? It's a simple matter of catchin' some Mexican geezer with his frijoles tellin' on him, grabbin' a corncob with one hand and his britches with the other, or some fat little granny weavin' a blanket on her back porch, or a little barefoot muchachito makin' mud tortillas in the yard. Hey - " he called out to his men, "you knuckleheads listen up. I got a little assignment for ya!"

"You…are not…leaving us?" Alejandro said in stricken tones.

"Not until we finish what we were sent to do," Ahmed said, as stricken as his twin and Elena, who stared at RoZita in dismay and sorrow. RoZ looked down at her hands. "We will help you destroy this enemy who is menacing you. I wish we could stay, myself. But I must take RoZita back to her time. It is not right to keep her with us when she has people there who have no idea what has happened to her."

"But that century has not happened," Elena protested, reaching out to touch RoZ's damp hair. "Her people do not exist. There is only...now. This is so strange...what is time? Are all events taking place even as we speak? Past, present and future?"

"It is a mystery to me also," Ahmed admitted. "But-" He halted as he heard something outside the cave. It was a horse's whinny. Alejandro sprang up. "Something is wrong. Tornado senses it. Perhaps they are out there?"

"Get the weapons," Ahmed went for the rifle he had taken from Cochino. Alejandro loaded his pistols, as did Elena.

"What should I do?" RoZita said. Her heart knocked as though it would fight its way out of her chest.

"Here," Elena handed her one of her pistols. "You know how to use it now."

RoZita too the weapon and made up her mind to shoot first and ask questions later, as they said on TV. She was a warrior princess, after all. She would defend everyone to the death...If only her hands would stop shaking so badly.

Alejandro climbed one of the ropes to the skylight and peered out.

"I can see some movement," he said. "Out in the forest. It appears to be some men." He slid down the rope in a spiraling motion. "I think perhaps they saw us go into the cave, and they will surround us. Perhaps come in through the skylight."

"We will be ready for them," Elena said, cradling the barrel of her pistol in her hand, which was shaking also. Ahmed cocked the rifle and raised it to his shoulder as if trying to remind himself of how to use it. Alejandro slid his sword into his belt.

And after a long moment, RoZita said, "I have an idea."


	17. Estela

~Chapter 17~

Before long, three of Hawk's men came back with a child. It was a little Mexican girl of about ten, tied up and gagged. One of the men carried her slung over his shoulder. She wore a ragged and dirty dress and her feet were bare.

"Found her wandering along the road by herself," he said with a grin, setting her down before Carnal Love and Hawk. "She's a little wildcat. Put up a big fight so we had to tie her up. She bit me, see?"

He laughingly displayed tooth marks on his wrist. Love blanched as he looked at her. The girl could have been Nestrelda's little sister, or Nestrelda herself at that age. The long black braids, the wild eyes that were looking right at him like she knew him and was going to tear his heart out!

He backed up a step or two, telling himself he was imagining things again. Ghosts only walked at night, and it wasn't hardly even noon yet. Besides, who could capture a ghost? Then again, maybe she'd let them capture her...

He didn't even look at any of the others to see if she were having the same effect on them. Evidently she was not.

"Hola, mariquita," Hawk said pinching her cheek. She gave him a look of hatred that would have unnerved a man slightly more sensitive, she would have bared her teeth if she hadn't been gagged. "How'd you like to help us catch a fox, li'l sis?"

Carnal Love didn't want to go near the child. But he forced himself. He removed the gag, trying not to see the way her staring black eyes penetrated his very soul like arrows.

"What's your name?" he asked her. She didn't answer right away, so he said again, more roughly and loudly, "What's your name?"

"Maybe she no speaka Ingles," Hawk suggested with a wink, and asked her, "Como te llamas, chiquita?"

She looked sullenly at him until he repeated the question in cajoling tones. Finally she said, "Estela" so low Love thought she said "Nestrelda." He thought for a minute he would throw up.

"Estela. That's a pretty name," Hawk said, and Love felt leaden with relief. "Estela honey, we don't want to hurt ya none. All we want is for you to help us capture a bad hombre, you hear me?" No response from Estela. Only that same unnerving stare. "Now all we want you to do is to make some noise. See this?"

Hawk took a gold coin from his pocket and held it out to her, turning it so that the sunlight glittered on it. "I'm gonna give you a whole bunch of these if you'll be good and do what you're told. They'll buy you lots and lots of nice things for you and your family. Food, pretty clothes, toys, all sorts of things. Then we'll take you home to your mama and papa so you can give 'em these pretty gold pieces. They'll be so happy, right?"

A shy smile transformed Estela's face, and she reached out a dirty little brown hand for the coin. Hawk held it out of her reach.

"First you have to help us," he said, "then this is yours, and lots more like it. You got that, sweetheart? Come along this way then." And they headed in the direction of the cave.

RoZita slid down the rope.

"I can't see any of them now," she said, "but they may still be out there. Think they'd dare come in the cave?"

"I do not think so," Ahmed said. "They know Zorro is here."

With a smile he looked at his twin who now wore the black mask and cape and black shirt of The Fox, as well as the hat and gloves.

"Is there another costume?" RoZita asked suddenly. "I mean, by any chance have you a spare cape and mask and hat?"

Only the cape and hat that were his - Don Diego's," Alejandro said sadly, "but they are very old. I hardly think they are fit to wear now."

Elena said, "Take off the cape and hat, Alejandro. You do not need them. They are only for dramatic effect anyway. We can make another mask. And you have other black shirts."

In no time at all there stood not one, but two masked Zorros. And one was teaching the other his moves as the women watched and cheered softly. RoZita felt proud of how fast Ahmed caught on. And he was able to teach Alejandro a few moves of his own, known only in the Mideast.

But she could not spend all her time watching. Soon she was trying to hone her own archery skills, such as they were, with the help of Elena, who was little more experienced at it than she was. There was only one target, but there were two bows and lots of arrows. They giggled as they missed the bull's eye over and over, but every once in a while they managed to hit it, or at least very close to it.

And then, they heard it. A high, piercing cry outside the cave. "Help! Help! HEEEELLLLLPPPP!"

"Are you sure we are going the right way?" Pancho asked. This road looked strange to him. He had never been this way before that he could remember.

"Yes," Ernesto said. "My master goes to meet his lady love at the waterfall each day at this time. I had a strange dream last night, when I managed at last to fall asleep. A gypsy girl with long braids appeared to me, telling me I should go to the waterfall, for my master needed me."

Pancho spoke soothingly to his horse, which seemed a little agitated all of a sudden, then looked thoughtfully at the little band of peasants he had rounded up. Most of them were men Zorro had saved at the mine, and now they were going with him to return the favor they owed the hero. It had not been difficult to persuade them to help, after young Willy explained to him that Zorro was in trouble. And who better to lead them than Alejandro's manservant Ernesto, who was considerably worried when Alejandro did not show at the house?

Ernesto was one of those peasants from the mine also. He was a rather small man and not young, but he was ready to give his life for his master if necessary.

"My master was ill when he started for the waterfall yesterday," he said. "And Se or Love did not return home either?"

"No, may the tree of his family dry up and rot throughout eternity," growled Pancho. "But the little Willy told me that his filthy cabron of a father had El Zorro abducted and taken to the lair of the dreaded pirate Scourge. At first I did not quite believe such wild tales from a small boy, but at last he convinced me he was telling the truth. Certainly he was not the same pesky little gordito who ran off yesterday morning with lots of big talk, it was as though he had been magically transformed. And I knew I must help the champion of our people. So, I went to El Blanco Caballito and rounded as many men as I could. Of course these men are only too willing to help after what El Zorro did for them."

"I too," Ernesto said, his voice a little unsteady.

"I never knew Murieta had a twin brother," Pancho continued. "The little Willy told me of a white camel ridden by the other Zorro. I found it hard to believe at first. I thought, at first the boy has gone loco. Making up stories. But the way he described Murieta was very accurate. And yes, he said Zorro was ill. How could he have known that if he had not been there? Then he showed me a green bottle and a fishbone they gave him. The bottle looked and smelled to be from some foreign country. The boy said he came from Araby. It is very strange, I must say."

Ernesto shook his head silently, then touched the pistol in his belt.

"Look!" whispered one of Hawk's men, pointing. Carnal and Hawk looked where he pointed. A black hat was slowly emerging from the cave skylight, then a black mask, then the cape, and...

Love raised his rifle while Hawk shushed the child. He drew a bead carefully at the figure of Zorro, lining up the head in his sights, and fired. The head exploded, the hat and cape fell away. Everyone looked in awe at each other, slightly sickened by the blood that splattered every which way. Estela was silent, just staring straight ahead.

"I got him," Love sounded disbelieving as he spoke.

"I thought you was gonna take him alive," Hawk said. Love came back to his senses. Yes, of course that was what he meant to do, but the presence of little Estela was affecting his mind again. He wasn't doing a thing he had planned. Now he'd just shot Zorro...or had he?

"There's still the other one," he said, hardly aware of what he was saying. "You don't reckon HE'D be stupid enough to come out too?"

"I doubt it," Hawk said. He turned to the child again. "Scream some more," he ordered. She immediately opened her mouth and cried out, "Help! HEEEELLLLLLP!"

They waited. No one came out. But a wail from within the cave issued.

"Let's go in," Love said, feeling slightly feverish.

"But -" Hawk started to protest, and Love cut him off.

"We're goin' in. We're goin' after my boy. Zorro's brains are litterin' the cave floor now, and we are gonna kill 'em all and take my boy. If you are too afraid I'll do it myself."

And he set his teeth together and started in the direction of the cave, and the others looked at each other and at Hawk, to see what they should do. Hawk looked at them for a moment, then jerked his head.

"Come on," he said. And he remembered to take little Estela by the hand and lead her along as though he was her daddy.

"Yuck, gross, what a mess," RoZita said, trying to scrub the splattered tomatoes and red peppers off Zorro's cape with an oily old rag. "I just hope that doesn't leave a bad stain."

Elena picked up the remains of the small burlap bag that had formed the head and untied it from the pole that had served as the body.

"That was a stroke of genius, RoZita," she said with a gentle smile.

"Pooh, it's an old trick. I've seen it any number of times on TV," RoZ said modestly. "It's a clich , actually. But if it works, that's the main thing, I reckon."

The two Zorros peered cautiously out the mouth of the cave.

"They are coming," Alejandro/Zorro said. "I cannot believe they fell for that. They must be crazy...or stupid."

Although Elena knew her Alejandro was used to fighting she felt a terrible fear. The high fever had taken much of his strength away and now did one though circled in her mind, "Oh my God, I'll die if I lose him!"

And as she raised her hand to grab his arm he turned, hugged her and said, " My love, please be careful!" and they gave each other a short but deeply sensitive tongue kiss. Then they whispered simultaneously, "I love you." Elena tried to push the bad thoughts away and trust in their ability to fight.

And she saw next to her Ahmed kissing RoZita's forehead and lips while RoZ caressed his cheek with one hand while with her other hand - Elena giggled a little to herself-she stroked his butt. Then the four friends put their hands together like the Musketeers, raising their swords and fervently wishing each other luck and strength and courage...

Ahmed/Zorro cocked Cochino's rifle. Then they heard a voice booming right outside, "Gimme my boy, you coward! Or we're comin' in shootin'!"

Alejandro and Ahmed looked puzzled at each other, then they saw the light. Love thought they still had Willy. And he'd never believe it if they told him the boy had been taken home.

Ahmed put a finger to his lips, then crept to the mouth of the cave, poking the rifle out. He could hardly believe Love would actually come into the cave when he knew he could be shot.

"I've got a little Mex gal here," Love said, grabbing the child none too gently from Hawk. "You gimme my boy and I'll let her go. If you don't give him up, she dies, you hear me? And she don't die quick neither. I'll cut her up in little pieces. A bit at a time. You'll hear her scream."

The men shuddered. Estela looked oddly unconcerned. She was even smiling a bit. Love could feel her eyes burning into him once more. He held her in front of himself with her back to his front so she couldn't look at him.

"Listen," one of the men said, cupping a hand to his ear. "Somebody's comin'!"

"Let 'em come," Love snapped. He yelled again, "One last chance. If I don't see my boy at the count of three, this little gal gets cut to pieces." He drew his knife from his belt and held it to her throat. "One..."

No one appeared. But the sound of horses' hooves could be heard getting closer and closer.

"Two..." Still no one. The men looked around nervously, less concerned now about little Estela than about who it might be approaching.

No one saw the brown-haired girl in men's clothes climb out onto the skylight with the bow and arrow. No one saw her take aim straight at Lucas Hawkins. No one saw her release the bow that sent the arrow flying straight to Hawk's heart.

"Three..."

And just then Hawk looked up and saw her, then suddenly stepped aside and the arrow meant for him hit the man directly behind him. But the man did not die. Instead he vanished right out into the air!

He reappeared in a street in Graz, Austria, in the year 1889, where he staggered right into a pregnant woman, knocking her into the path of an oncoming carriage, which ran over her, killing her and her unborn child instantly. Her name was Clara Schicklgruber, mother of the baby who would have grown up to be Adolf Hitler

Carnal Love saw the man's disappearance and right away he knew he was going crazy and little Estela was Nestrelda without a doubt. Releasing her, he reached for his pistol and fired frantically at the skylight, but the girl with the bow had disappeared. She had crawled over the side of the cave and hidden herself in some bushes, where she fired another arrow into the small army, which was now scattering about like a flock of chickens when a hawk, so to speak, flies over.

Even so, she hit another man, and he was knocked into the Caucasian town of Gori, Georgia, in 1879, where he accidentally knocked a pregnant woman into the path of a runaway horse, causing her to miscarry the fetus which would have grown to be the man who would have come to be known as Josef Stalin

The third man she hit was projected into the year 1960, in the city of Malaga, Spain, where he stumbled into a street and knocked a pregnant woman out of the path of a drunk driver who would have run her over. The woman was named Ana Bandera y Dominguez, and she was carrying the embryo of the movie actor who would come to be internationally known as Antonio Banderas...

Alejandro/Zorro charged out of the cave with his pistol, aiming at Love. Love raised his pistol and pulled the trigger, but a click was the only sound it made. He had run out of bullets. Alejandro threw down his own pistol and drew his sword, and Love drew his own.

Little Estela darted off, to be caught by Hawk, but she slipped out of his grasp and disappeared into the woods. Hawk pulled out his pistol and cocked it at Alejandro/Zorro, when a loud crack rang out and he dropped the pistol with a cry, grabbing his bleeding left arm with his right. Ahmed/Zorro came charging in his direction as Elena blew the smoke from the barrel of her pistol and reloaded it. Hawk, in spite of his wounded arm, was able to draw his sword, warding off the blow Ahmed/Zorro aimed at him.

The clashing of blades rang through the forest with resounding echoes. Ahmed/Zorro seemed intent on piercing Hawk, anywhere, with the point of his sword. Hawk was just as intent on keeping him from doing so. Love fought like the crazy man he now was, but he was not so crazy that he could not give Alejandro/Zorro a good fight.

Alejandro danced all around him, baiting him like a bear. He was remembering all he had been through the day before, both the good and the bad, and he used the memory to his advantage. The knowledge that he was to become a father made him cautious, less reckless than he might have otherwise been. Which was perhaps why Love finally managed to knock the sword out of his hand, at which Alejandro turned a back handspring, then turned a frontward somersault between Love's legs, retrieving the sword. Love tried to kick it away but Alejandro stomped hard on his foot, recovering his weapon. Then he rushed at a tree, jumped up high, bounced off the trunk with both feet, and butted Love in the back with his head. Love went sprawling onto the ground with an "umph" losing his sword.

That was when he saw little Estela again, sitting up in a tree looking right down at him with her mocking eyes. He backed away on his rear, terrified. It was Alejandro who picked up Love's sword and tossed it back to him. Love scrambled to his feet, growled like a rabid wolf and went straight for Zorro once more.

RoZita saw another man creeping up on them from the bushes, raising a pistol toward Alejandro. She took another arrow from her quiver, dipped the tip into the little jar into which she had poured some of the time-travel potion, fitted the arrow into her bow, and took careful aim.

And Osama bin Laden was never born.

But she didn't see the man who was creeping up behind HER.


	18. Jugs of Rum

~Chapter 18~

The soldier crept up on RoZita on hands and knees, pulling a pistol from his holster and aiming at her back, glancing around to see if anyone else saw...

Then suddenly a shotgun blast from far off startled them both. She whirled about to see him, and not having time to fit her arrow into the bow, leaped forward and drove it into his shoulder. But no one's birth was prevented because she hadn't had time to dip the arrow into the jar either. He howled with pain, then lunged for the pistol he dropped. She grabbed for it too but he got there first and snatched it. She sprang up and kicked him in the stomach, wishing she had harder shoes than these soft moccasins. She knew she wasn't likely to win this one, since he was a man and she was a woman and he was stronger. She couldn't see Ahmed now, or Alejandro. As far as she knew, it was just the two of them.

He grunted and rolled over on his side, aiming the pistol at her and cocking it. She grabbed another arrow and jabbed his face with it, but all it did was throw his aim off so that he fired into the air. She tried jabbing at his eye but got him in the cheek instead. She pierced him a little but didn't do much more than that. He rolled over to his knees, half crazy with pain, and cocked the pistol again. Suddenly she jumped high in the air and kicked him in the chest with both feet simultaneously. It took him entirely by surprise and he fell over backwards with a yell, the pistol flying right out of his hand. This time she didn't take the chance of diving for it, she took off on a run toward the cave.

The man didn't give immediate chase, he was still trying to get his bearings, then find his pistol, which had flown into some poison ivy, which he recognized for what it was. She didn't know where she should run but suddenly it seemed the woods were full of men. She heard another one in the bushes and suddenly he appeared. When he saw her he looked at her with lustful triumph and she had no doubt of his intentions.

"Goin' somewhere, purty gal?" he cackled, approaching her with a yellow-toothed grin.

She glanced all about. She couldn't even see where the cave was now. She could hear the swords clashing still, but couldn't tell which direction they were coming from.

"I don't...think so," she said, her mouth feeling dry.

He came closer, his hand touching a knife in his belt. She tried not to look at the bulge in his pants. Then she remembered the bulge in her own belt.

"I guess we're alone now," she said softly. "Just the two of us. Me...and you, in your uniform. I do like a man in uniform, you know." She gave him a coy glance.

"You do, do ya?" He seemed almost disappointed that she was putting up so little resistance, but he did not back down.

"Yes," she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. "Especially one so rough and rugged. I find them terribly...sexy."

"Sexy...I don't know that word, but I kinda like the sound of it," the man said, coming closer, and she could smell him now, but made a heroic effort not to grimace. "And I like the look of you. Nice bosoms you got there, sweetheart. I do like a gal with nice bosoms. I find them...sexy."

"Yes," she said trying not to flinch as he came closer and put his hands on her shoulders. "But oh, I don't like that smell on your breath. Why don't you let me give you some of this to sweeten it a little?"

"What is it?" he looked at her in puzzled curiosity as she took the little jar from her belt. She took out the lid and held it to him.

"Take just one sip," she said. "Not too much now..."

"Say...you ain't tryin to pizen me, are ya?" the man said. "You drink some first, little lady. So I'll know it's safe."

"Oh, you don't swallow it," she said. "Just swirl it around in your mouth to get rid of the whiskey smell, then spit it out."

"After you," he said looking at her in a very meaning way.

"OK," she said blandly, and took some in her mouth. She sloshed it around, careful not to swallow any. Then, suddenly, she spat it right in his eyes, unable to resist yelling melodramatically, "Here is RoZita's kiss!"

He jumped back with a yelp of pain, and she sucked at the tip of an arrow, then jabbed it into his belly.

And Saddam Hussein was never born.

But there were more men where that one had come from. And soon she found herself surrounded.

~O~O~

Alejandro was getting tired. He still had not entirely recovered from his illness of yesterday, and he felt his strength waning. He didn't know how much longer he could hold out against this more vigorous and determined and half-crazy adversary.

Elena could see his fatigue, and she decided that she would have to help him somehow. Even though she was pregnant and must be careful. At this point, Alejandro still came first with her.

Ahmed was also badly matched against Hawk, who was not nearly as big as Scourge but was still bigger than the Arab, stronger and a more experienced soldier. He seemed to be enjoying himself. There was a gleam in his grey eyes and a little grin under his long mustache. Ahmed managed to wound him a little in the side. But it did not even seem to faze him. He kept baiting his opponent: "Where'd you learn fencing, pretty boy, in Sunday school? Where'd your fancy lady go? Ain't no tellin' what all them horny billy goats are liable to do to a sweet young thing like her. Come on, you gotta fight harder than that if you want to keep me away from her, Tom Thumb."

Ahmed had to give the man credit; he was some fighter. Ahmed had several nicks and cuts, while Hawk had only about one or two. But Ahmed was still holding his own, although he, too, could feel some of his strength dissipating. He didn't know how much longer he could hold out, and he didn't know what had become of RoZita. He had a feeling she had not stayed in the cave like he wanted her to. He just prayed that her idea was working for her.

Elena almost didn't recognize her fantastic sword fighter who was able to fence against ten dangerous enemies at the same time once. For a second she remembered the day when she at first saw him as Zorro, "flying" from the balcony of her false father's hacienda in the middle of a circle of soldiers, fooling them and then, with a adorable smile, disappearing. Right now he had to struggle with all his strength to survive against ONE man.

Elena didn't have time to think over much more because a soldier came upon Alejandro from behind with his sword.

Elena leaped out from behind the tree calling, "I bet you'll never fight against a woman!" She raised her sword to attack the surprised man, who smiled arrogantly and moved his sword faster until she stumbled backwards almost falling to the ground and felt a terrible pain in her left shoulder.

She tried to calm herself, thinking, "Use your fencing lessons! Think like Zorro!" For the first time in her entire life she had to use her knowledge about fencing for something other than fun. She had to use it to survive and to save the life of her beloved man because in this moment she saw that he was almost on the ground.

Determined, she attacked the soldier now. One blow followed the next. Then, she gasped heavily, lowered her weapon, whispering, "Oh dear, I feel...faint..." and held onto her heart with her free hand, staggering back a little.

With that he lowered his sword also, saying, "A bit too much for ya, what? Need some help?" and chuckled, at which she suddenly raised her sword and ran it into his belly.

"Just a bit," she said as he stared at her in stunned and painful surprise.

She had to catch her breath, ignored her wounded shoulder and looked to Alejandro, saw he would manage the fight against Carnal Love not much more longer. She knew she was been to exhausted for a new fight against another man, so she took her pistol and crept around the trees...

But she could not risk a shot at Love without hitting Alejandro. She also wondered where RoZita was. This didn't look good for anyone...then she, too, had an idea. Running back to the cave, she seized the rifle and loaded it. Then she ran off into the woods and fired the shotgun into the air. Then she hastily reloaded, and rushed off to another part and fired again. Then she emptied her pistol into the air. And much to her surprise, answering shots rang out.

The shots startled the ever-excitable Tornado, who was grazing alongside of Luna, Elena's mare, in the meadow. (Fezeek, who did not seem to like horses, was far at the other end, keeping a haughty distance.) Tornado, with a loud whinny, reared up, then bolted in the direction of his master and Carnal Love.

~O~O~

Alejandro/Zorro felt a sudden wave of dizziness and in that moment Love knocked the sword from his hand. Alejandro recovered himself and barely dodged Love's thrust, which sliced through his sleeve and scratched his arm, then lost his footing and stumbled to the ground as he dived for his fallen weapon. And then he heard the thundering of hooves just as Carnal Love raised his sword to give Zorro a deadly thrust. Tornado!

The black stallion was coming straight at them. Love halted, looking in the horse's direction. Alejandro rolled out of the way as Tornado galloped at full tilt toward his enemy, who tried to scramble out of the way but backed right into a thorny bush, which aggravated his poison ivy rash further, and once more he seemed to see little Estela looking straight at him. It froze him to the spot and Tornado knocked him right over and ran straight over him. It didn't kill him but it gave Alejandro time to recover his sword.

Carnal, swearing viciously, made a desperate attempt to get up, rolling to his hands and knees trying to locate his sword, then felt an enormous kick to his butt which still ached from the contact with the camel's hooves. With a yell he went sprawling forward and Tornado gave a whinny that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Alejandro's laugh was quite human as he hacked a very quick Z on his adversary's itching belly.

Unfortunately for Hawk, he picked that moment to laugh also. And his sense of humor proved the death of him, as Ahmed's sword skewered him straight through his sternum. Ahmed lost no time in watching and gloating over the death of his enemy, who fell moaning and doubling up in anguish, clutching at his stomach. The Arab rushed to his twin to help him in his struggle against Carnal Love, when suddenly they were all startled by shouts in the distance. And there were Pancho and Ernesto, leading a small band of Mexican peasants bearing rifles, muskets, and pistols, some with pitchforks, a few with swords.

Elena and RoZita followed close behind, Elena with her rifle and RoZita with her bow, looking a bit rattled. The two young women flanked the men as they came running forward.

"Pancho," hissed Love from where he lay on the ground still trying to find his sword, "you traitorous bastard..." And he suddenly whipped out a pistol and fired at his ranch hand.

The shot grazed Pancho's arm, then struck a man behind him, felling him. Then the entire band rushed forward, not shooting for fear of hitting Alejandro, but they were after Carnal Love, without a doubt. He raised his pistol and squeezed the trigger again, only to hear a click.

That was when Alejandro raised his arm to the band, crying, "STOP!" He pointed behind the men, who looked to see some of Hawk's cavalrymen pointing rifles and aiming. Promptly Pancho's men opened fire and most of the cavalrymen fell.

Love used that moment to try to escape. He dove into a stand of bushes, and Alejandro, Ahmed, and Pancho's men immediately went in hot pursuit like a pack of hounds on a rabbit. One of the men wounded him in the leg with a pistol shot, but he got away and headed right for the mouth of the cave. The others stopped short as they heard him yelling for Willy, looking at each other in puzzlement.

Then Pancho understood. Holding onto the wound in his arm, he approached the mouth of the cave, cautiously peering in with his shotgun pointed. Love shouted for his son, scrambling around the cave for any signs of the boy. He found a brace of pistols on a table, and tucked one in his belt, then held onto the other. He looked inside the trunk, the cabinet, anywhere the boy might be.

Then he heard Pancho's voice calling, "Señor Love! Willy is not there! The gypsy woman bring him home, he is safe!"

"You goddamn liar!" growled Love. He was too crazy now to wonder how Pancho could have known about Nestrelda if it weren't so. "They've took him and killed him, that's what they done! And you're all gonna die for it!"

Then he saw a black cape lying on the floor with bloody-looking splatters on it that proved to be nothing more than the innards of tomatoes and red peppers, along with a splattered hat and a gory piece of burlap, and surmised it was what they had mistaken for Zorro.

"Right clever," he said out loud, and he actually winked.

Then he spied a bag lying in the corner. He was disappointed to find only some bottles and jars, but one of them, at least, looked halfway interesting. It was a tall black bottle with an oriental-looking stopper, and he pulled it and sniffed at the contents. He could use a drink just now. But what was it? It didn't smell like liquor. Or perfume, or like anything he had ever smelled. Didn't look like there was much left. Could be poison, for all he knew. Then again, it didn't smell like poison...

He tried another bottle, a prettier one of dark blue glass. It smelled like perfume, not a woman's but with a more masculine scent to it, something some jack-a-dandy lady-killer might wear a-courtin'. Whew, it was strong, and it made him almost giddy. He had a feeling if he wore that he could make a woman do whatever he wanted. Not that he was one to put on scent, but then again, maybe Murieta was wearing it and he had the fair Elena...

Chuckling, Love slapped a bit onto each cheek, then replaced the stopper. Then he turned his attention to the black bottle once more. He was really very thirsty.

~O~O~

"Is there any way out of the cave other than the mouth and the skylight?" Ahmed asked.

The cave was surrounded. The peasants were clearly furious over the death of Tico Sanchez, who was only nineteen. Two of them had carried his body into a cool spot beside the waterfall. The others were muttering among themselves, some declaring that they should go into the cave, even at the risk of getting blown away. Those without families should be the ones to do so, declared Ernesto. He had no family. His wife, Carlota, had been killed by Harrison Love's soldiers when she tried to stop them from abducting Ernesto for the mine. He would be happy to go into the cave and flush out the bastard's brother, even at the risk of his life, but Pancho held him back.

"You have your sons," he reminded him.

"They are grown," Ernesto said. "They do not need me now."

"_I_ need you, Ernesto," Alejandro told him. "I have no father now. You are like a father to me since my master is dead."

Ernesto blushed under his dark skin. "Ah, Señor Alejandro, you flattering rascal. But if I am indeed a father to you, then I must avenge the terrible things this chingadero did to you. He is a rat who must be expunged."

"We will not sacrifice more lives needlessly," Alejandro said, glancing over at the place where the body of young Tico had been carried. RoZita laid a small bunch of wild flowers on it, then Elena covered it with a blanket. Ahmed watched them.

"Yes," the Arab said, "and I am very thankful to you and the others for saving her from those three soldiers. I cannot bear to think what would have happened to her otherwise. You are my father now also, since Alejandro is my brother."

He touched Ernesto's shoulder gently. Ernesto had accepted Elena's twins-separated-at-birth story.

"The resemblance is truly amazing," the small man said, looking from one Zorro to the other. They had both removed their masks. "And neither of my natural-born sons are even half so handsome. They resemble their homely dog of a father, unfortunately."

"Pah," Alejandro scoffed. "You do yourself discredit."

Ernesto did have fine eyes, large and brilliant, that could go from merriment to fury at a moment's notice. Ahmed could hardly help noticing his resemblance to Hakim, the old magician who was responsible for his being here to begin with. Could it be?

RoZita came back to Ahmed's side. She still had three arrows left in her quiver.

"Are you all right, my angel?" Ahmed asked her, putting his arm around her waist.

"I'm fine," she said, sniffling a little, glancing back at the covered body of Tico. "He had such long eyelashes," she said almost inaudibly. "He looks about fourteen with his eyes closed."

"He was very brave," Ahmed said. "And so are you. I thank Allah and all these wonderful men for your deliverance."

"You know," she said, "I still have a few drops left. I could creep up on him and -"

"No," Ahmed said, tightening his grip on her waist. "I will absolutely not allow it. I got you into this, and I will not risk your life any more."

"I think we should flush him out," she said. "If only there were some way of getting up on the skylight and..." She snapped her fingers. "Those jugs of rum! How many did we bring with us?"

"Only two-the ones you insisted on bringing for medicinal purposes, pouring that boiling stuff onto our wounds and scalding the lives out of us." He smiled ruefully. "How do you propose to flush him out with rum?"

She grinned, that I-have-an-idea grin of hers with which he was all too familiar now.

"I don't suppose anyone here has ever heard of a Molotov cocktail?" she said.


	19. The End of Love

~Chapter 19~

Carnal Love raised the black bottle to his lips. Maybe it WAS poison. Who cared? Nobody gave a damn if he lived or died, anyway. There was a mob shouting for his blood out there. He didn't stand a chance. Might as well die in the cave as give himself up to them and be torn apart like a piece of meat by a pack of wolves...

And just as he was about to drink, he heard a voice from above. "Señor Love! You look like you could use a drink, amigo!"

Love looked up at the skylight, hearing his own words that he had spoken to Alejandro the day before. It was Zorro, naturally. Which one, he had no idea. Didn't matter anyway. Damn, there was the other one, too. Both of them, and they held what looked like Scourge's rum jugs, with flaming rags stuck in them.

Love frantically felt for his pistol, then the Zorro who had spoken dropped his jug and it shattered on the cave floor, spewing burning liquid everywhere. Love dropped the black bottle, which shattered at his feet. He was surrounded by flames, and he glanced wildly around for the opening of the cave. Then the other Zorro dropped his jug, and some of the burning rum splashed on Love's clothing.

He screamed and slapped at himself, then ran for the cave entrance.

And the mob was on him.

One fired a shot. It hit him in the leg but he kept running. It was then he remembered his reloaded pistol, and he grabbed it and fired at his pursuers, then scrambled into some underbrush, only to confront a couple of peasants with muskets. They fired, hitting him in the side, but even that didn't stop him. He shot one of them and turned in the other direction...

...only to confront...

...Nestrelda...

...fully grown now, holding a sword straight out and smiling...

And she said, "Did you miss me?"

Love stood frozen, his mouth open in a soundless O of horror. And he watched as her face blackened and crumpled like a piece of burning paper, as she moved right toward him and...

...drove the sword right through his belly. Love shrieked, clutching himself, as she snatched the sword from him, dripping blood, and he staggered about, moaning, then fell on his front, then rolled over on his back, looking up at her. Only, it wasn't Nestrelda.

It was Elena.

And now others gathered round, as he lay clutching his bleeding wound and groaning, a few of them jeering, but most of them silent. Elena drew back a little, tossing the bloody sword aside with an expression of horror at what she had done. The brown-haired girl with the quiver and bow slipped over to her and put an arm around her and looked at Love with a mixture of fear and pity.

Up this close, Love recognized her. "Christina," he gasped. "For...give me..."

And he died.

~O~O~

"It's really over?" Elena whispered as she and Alejandro walked back to the waterfall. He kept his arm around her waist and guided her, and she leaned against him. She seemed in a state of shock. Alejandro's mask was off and he was stroking her hair.

The others were gathering up the bodies and loading them onto a wagon, or tending to the wounded. Elena could see RoZita bandaging up both Ahmed and Pancho and fretting about being out of rum.

"Yes," Alejandro said. "He is dead. Are you all right, querida?"

"I think so." She heard the anxiety in his voice and she leaned her head against his shoulder, feeling very weak.

Alejandro held her fingers tightly and said, "Let us sit down for a moment next to the tree, please." And as they did so Elena leaned against her man, heard his calm deep voice speaking to his friends but the words didn't come through her mind, she felt asleep immediately. She saw Alejandro...oh God, he was so beautiful...He wore light brown aristocratic clothing but he didn't move like a nobleman. He bent down over a crib to a baby. She heard him speak: ..._but don't worry, little Joaquin, there will ever, ever be a Zorro_... She saw him touch the tiny nose of the baby with one finger..._And some day when we'll need him again_... she didn't understand the words now because the baby giggled with pleasure. Then Alejandro suddenly took the bunch of Rumania flowers from the crib and used it like a sword, jumping and fighting against an invisible enemy calling "...fighting like a lion...fighting like a tiger...!"

Elena smiled and now she felt his soft lips on hers, his fingertips on her cheek. He was whispering her name and once more she whispered back: "Alejandro, my love..."

But suddenly she heard more voices in the background...still murmuring...it was strange...another sweet kiss of his smooth lips but only very lightly...there must be something wrong...

Slowly she opened her eyes wondering why her man kissed her in this unpassionate way..As she finally got her eyes open she blushed a little. Four pairs of eyes were looking down at her, black, brown, and greenish hazel, all full of concern and admiration.

"It's all right, my dearest, you need some sleep," Alejandro smiled at her.

"Are you sure you're all right?" she heard RoZita's voice saying. "You're not going...to lose the baby or anything? Does anyone know of a doctor?"

"No no no no," Elena gasped as she saw Ahmed and RoZ and Ernesto all looking at her. "Never. I have just had a dream...the baby is fine."

She gave them all a lovely, sweet smile, which flickered out in a moment like a candle flame in a puff of wind. She looked with concern at Alejandro. "You do not think...that the baby will be damaged, or...stained or marked...by what I did?"

"Of course not," Alejandro soothed her. "Our child is lucky to have such a courageous mother. You are the true hero this day."

"I don't know. I think we have all done plenty. And I could have done nothing without all of you." She smiled once more at everyone around her.

"I wonder who Christina is," RoZita said as she walked off with Ahmed and Ernesto to allow Alejandro and Elena to be alone together for a while. "He looked right at me and called me Christina and said, 'Forgive me.' It's so weird. It was like he knew me, and..."

"You reminded him of someone he knew by that name," Ahmed said. "That is all. It is strange, yes. But I'm sure there is some explanation."

She didn't see Ernesto looking at her very oddly just then, because her next thoughts were of the black bottle.

"I wonder if it's still there," she said. "The potion, I mean. I have none left in this jar. It must have spilled."

"What potion?" Ernesto said. Ahmed looked at him and once more he thought how much like the magician Hakim he looked, at least around the eyes. Since Hakim was old and Ernesto was only middle aged, the resemblance was not too strong. But the eyes were very much alike.

They found the bottle shattered in the cave. RoZita picked up piece after piece, desperately trying to find traces of the potion in them, but they were dry, as if they had never held any liquid at all.

"I'm trapped," she whispered, tears starting in her eyes. "I'll never see my parents again."

As Ahmed put his arms around her she wondered, dizzily, if it would do any good to click her heels together and chant, "There's no place like home." She rather doubted it. And Ernesto was looking strangely at her once more.

"I know who Christina was," he said very softly.

Ahmed looked at him questioningly. RoZita didn't look at him at all. She no longer cared.

"Please tell us," Ahmed said, as he stroked her hair.

"She was a servant girl who worked in Love's house shortly after his marriage," Ernesto explained. "That was about ten or twelve years ago. Of course, it is only hearsay to me. I do not know how much is true and how much is mere gossip and speculation. But I heard that he was in love with her, and pursued her relentlessly. Love's wife, Ruby Mae, became furiously jealous. So she went spreading it all over town that the girl was a harlot and she and Love were having an affair. Christina left the house and went back to her parents, but she could hardly go anywhere without people hounding her openly or whispering behind her back. Rumor had it that she was carrying his child, although Love vehemently denied that he had ever touched her. Finally she could stand it no more, I suppose, and she committed suicide. And the medical examination revealed..."

Ernesto broke off, looking at RoZita hesitantly, as though wondering whether it would offend her for him to tell.

"That she was pregnant?" she finished for him.

"Yes," Ernesto said. "Such a sad thing. She was only seventeen, pretty, bright, and spirited, but a bit shy and overly sensitive. I imagine she was...raped. I do not believe she ever succumbed willingly to him, although I will never know for certain. You could be her twin sister, I would swear. I had almost forgotten, it has been so long since it happened, but when he spoke her name...you know, her parents are still living. Perhaps you should meet them."

"Umm...do you think that's such a good idea?" she hedged. "If I look so much like her, wouldn't it be too painful of a reminder? Or wouldn't it scare them?"

At the same time she was suddenly very curious. Her own parents were lost to her...or were they?

They left the cave and went back to the waterfall. Pancho and some of the men were still there. Ernesto went to Pancho and spoke with him. Ahmed went to where Alejandro and Elena still sat and told them about the broken bottle and what Ernesto had told them about Christina.

"I have a really weird feeling," RoZita said. "I want to meet her parents. Or at least see them from a distance. I just...really want to do this."

"You know where they live?" Alejandro asked Ernesto.

"I can find out," Ernesto said.

"I did not know about this," Pancho said as they all rode into town. They were a strange company indeed, Ahmed and RoZita riding Fezeek in the lead, Alejandro on Tornado, Elena on Luna beside him, Pancho and Ernesto on their horses, the rest of the men riding behind, a wagon pulling the bodies in the rear. "I have only lived in this area for about six years. Had I known, I would never have worked for such an evil scoundrel. Never would have allowed my Luisita to live in his house."

"Oh, I imagine Señora Love has been keeping a weather eye out for the girl this time," Ernesto said with grim humor.

The house where Christina's parents lived was a small one, shabby but neat. RoZita trembled as Ahmed helped her down from the camel. Then she suddenly turned to Ernesto.

"Did Christina have any sisters?" she asked.

"Three, I believe," he said. "She was the eldest."

RoZita drew a deep breath. She had three younger sisters.

It was a long time before she could bring herself to knock at the door. She heard a small dog barking within, and she clutched Ahmed's hand tightly, not out of fear of the dog, but from anticipation.

"Who is it?" she heard a voice speak inside, and her heart nearly stopped beating. The voice was so like her mother's. Then the door opened and a small, plump, pretty woman in her late forties appeared. And she and RoZ both nearly fainted.

"Christina?" the woman gasped.

"Oh my God," RoZita nearly screamed. "MOM!"

~O~O~

Ahmed could see her exactly...a tall, golden-haired woman in a long blue dress. She sat in a meadow with a baby in her arm...the sun was shining on them...his little boy jumped around with other boys his age...and there were other women too...and she smiled at him like an angel...she became an angel, his Olga...and she waved to him...from the distance, calling, "Ahmed, do it! You should not be alone your whole life! Marry her. She is a good, lovely, and brave woman. And she loves you with all her heart...we are doing fine here..."

Then slowly the whole scene disappeared...and Ahmed found himself whispering, "You will always be in my mind..."

He opened his eyes and felt RoZita nestled on his chest, her arm around his waist, still deeply sleeping, her hair loose and flowing over her shoulders, with reddish gold highlights in it from the sun that peeped between the leaves of the oak tree they rested underneath. He thought of his vision again. He would never forget his lost family but this woman who rested beside him now had become his new love. He had known her for only a few weeks, but he couldn't imagine being parted from her. She made him laugh and feel wonderful, she was singing and writing with him, loving him as both poet and warrior. She even had a little horse of her own now, a colt born to Luna and Tornado a couple of weeks ago, and Ahmed was teaching her to ride...

He smiled, tenderly caressing her hair, remembering her lying at his feet in her colorful outsized garment, at their first meeting, the way she stoutly defended him against Elena with his scimitar...She now wore a pretty green and yellow calico dress made in the fashion of the period, which looked very odd to him, but she wore it with the air of a young girl dressing up for a masquerade. She had taken off her straw bonnet, which was charmingly trimmed with yellow silk roses, and her small hand held the strings loosely in her sleep, looking far too innocent to be the brave warrioress who had fought by his side...

But something was wrong. She did not look peaceful.

Then suddenly she squirmed and began to thrust with her feet against an invisible enemy, yelling, "No, NO! Go away! DON'T TOUCH ME!"

Ahmed sat up, calling, "RoZita, dearest, wake up! I'm here! It is only a dream!" Gently he shook her by the shoulder. Finally she opened her eyes, shuddering, glancing fearfully around. But as she looked at Ahmed who was leaning against the tree now, holding her hands, the moonlight fell on his face, which was covered with a two-day beard, she forgot almost immediately her terrible nightmare.

"It was him," she gasped. "He came to my bed...and I couldn't get away from him..."

Ahmed gently touched her face saying, "My love, forget the dream, come here." He took her in his arms and only held her tight for few moments. She felt his warm body and caressed his chest hair. It felt so good only to lie there silently and to be held by him.

After a sweet eternity Ahmed cleared his throat and RoZ looked up into his beautiful dark eyes, thinking she could have applied blusher to her cheeks with his eyelashes. He stood up and pulled her on her feet, then knelt in front of her, took her hand, kissed it and begged, "RoZita, my angel, I love you, I need you like the earth needs the water and the sun to be alive, to produce all beautiful and necessary things. I must never be parted from you, I want to share my life with you. Please, marry me!"

His plea took her breath away. RoZita knelt too, able only to nod, and they fell into each other's arms as their lips met in an endless kiss.


	20. Conclusion

~Chapter 20~

Fray Felipe was getting sentimental. His voice shook as he read the marriage ceremony to the two couples. The women wore white lace dresses in the Spanish style with the veils shading their faces, Elena's drapery concealing the now visible swelling of her belly. She carried crimson roses and RoZita carried golden ones. Elena wore a gold chain with a cross of rubies, while RoZita wore a small rope of pearls that had been meant for Christina. It had been promised by her grandmother to the first bride in the family.

Christina's three pretty sisters, Judith, Dora, and Mollie, served as bridesmaids for both brides, although Judith was married. They were dressed the way Elena had been the night of the Montero party, and they seemed delighted with their costumes, giggling and fluttering about like butterflies, popping their fingers like Spanish dancers, fussing with their hair, trying to get everything just right. They carried little clusters of romania flowers. It was two months since RoZita had met Christina's family, and they really seemed to think of her as Christina now. And since they looked exactly like her sisters but for their clothing and hairstyles, she had gradually come to think of them as hers, and felt as if she'd always known them. They seemed to know so much about her. Dora would say, "Come on and play the piano now!" How could she have known RoZ could play? Or Judith would have her do the "bouncy game" with her baby boy that RoZ used to play with her little nephew, and Mollie would offer to do her hair, just as RoZita's youngest sister used to do. They all tactfully avoided mentioning Carnal Love.

It had been explained to them that another body had been mistaken for Christina's when they pulled it from the river-it was just a girl who looked like her. And since it was so long ago and they were only little girls when it happened, they believed it, especially as Ahmed was wearing the scent as he told them. Christina had run away, and had been working as a servant in a wealthy family, suffering from amnesia. For twelve years she'd had no recollection who she was or what happened, she'd called herself RoZita and finally recovered her memory when she fell downstairs and hit her head one day. She'd left the house and wandered out through the countryside, intent on getting back to her family, when she'd encountered Ahmed and Elena.

It felt odd to RoZ to have two different names, but she answered to both. A strange thing had begun to happen: her memory of the twentieth century was fading. She stopped fretting over not being allowed to wear shorts and halter tops and makeup, having no air conditioning, no cars, radio, TV, stereo, hot and cold running water, etc. Sometimes she could almost forget these things had ever existed. She had a difficult time recalling the words and tunes to songs she'd liked, and had to think hard to remember the names of the Beatles...

One thing Alejandro did a few weeks before the wedding was to get circumcised, because he wanted to be as much like his twin as possible, he said. Ahmed had to go with him to hold his hand because Alejandro was terrified, but he wouldn't let anyone talk him out of it! The women (who weren't allowed to go along, since Alejandro didn't want Elena to see him hurt) laughed a little about it, and RoZ said, "Do you suppose he'll get scars on his face to match Ahmed's too?" And Elena said, "Do not ever mention it to him, please-knowing him, he will go out and do it!" When the women went to the hospital to pick up the men, RoZita was horrified at the conditions she saw there. The funny thing was, they listened to her when she talked about sterilization and so forth. In her old life, seemed like no one ever listened to a word she said, but now that she had hero status, people paid attention to her and obeyed her word. She was elated: now she had a Cause. She could instigate any change. She was like a queen, she had Power. She just had to resolve never to let this power go to her head, let it corrupt her in any way. If anything would ever break the spell, it would be that...

Spanish musicians played on medieval-looking instruments as the bridal procession moved up the aisle. Flowers adorned every pew of the church, garlands of them laid over statues, candles everywhere that candles could be placed, incense nearly overpowering everything with its spicy fragrance. It was more ostentatious than RoZita would have liked, but she guessed it was a Spanish/Catholic thing, the pageantry and all, and so she'd decided to go along with it...and now she was glad she did. She found it delicious. The peasants gloried in it. They had turned out in huge crowds, dressed up in their most colorful costumes, singing, dancing, playing instruments, jugglers and acrobats and clowns and dancers performing in the street, to the delight of both children and adults. Not all of them could be crowded into the church, so they congregated outside, and while the ceremony was going on they were perfectly quiet, only a few sniffles and coughs interrupting the solemnity. "

...To love and to cherish, till death do you part?"

"I do!"

The priest read a lot of stuff in Latin, which RoZita didn't get, but it sounded so lovely, it brought tears to her eyes. The men looked breathtaking in their gold-embroidered black jackets, white ruffled shirts, and velvet cummerbunds: Alejandro's was ruby red with a flame-like luster; Ahmed's a dusky sapphire blue with a purplish tinge. Their hair was the same length now, slicked down with only one or two little curls escaping. RoZ hardly looked at the gorgeous stained-glass windows.

She did suddenly remember a song she had played at the wedding of a friend, and she sang it now to Ahmed:

_Whither thou goest, I will go_

_Whither thou lodgest, I will lodge_

_Thy people shall be my people, my love_

_Whither thou goest, I will go._

She could hear her sisters sniffling behind her...

Ahmed read a poem he had composed for the occasion:

_Thy hand in mine, thy fingers are tendrils_

_Which bind me forever to thy side_

_I am thy pillar, thy statue, thy monument,_

_And thy blossoms shall enthrall me_

_Until I am invisible, with no other purpose_

_Than to shape thy beauty unto its goal_

_To be molded in thine embrace unto the flaming shape_

_Which heaven designed from the beginning,_

_The mold Allah declared: "This shall be used but once..."_

Alejandro recited one of his own:

_Beneath the silent candles of the stars_

_Beneath the ancient furnace of the sun_

_Thou art my waterfall_

_And I thy stream_

_Fill me forever with thy crystal glory_

_And flow with me to the eternal sea_

_Where we shall embrace forever_

_And cradle our little ones as tiny ships_

_Laden with untold treasures..._

Elena could say only, "My prince," then choke up entirely.

Then Ernesto, also richly dressed, approached, carrying the rings on a velvet pillow. The priest gave the rings to each couple, and just before he spoke, Ernesto suddenly reached under RoZita's veil and pulled out a live dove. Everyone gasped, some looking at each other in puzzlement: magic tricks at a time like this? Then Ernesto held the white bird high and let it go, and it circled upward toward the ceiling, then swooped downward toward the door. And RoZita lost all her remaining memory of the twentieth century, and also her memory of what Carnal Love had done to her. She would never dream of him again.

The priest instructed the two couples to kneel, and he brought the gold chalice from the pew and gave it first to Alejandro, who sipped from it, and handed it to Elena. She drank and handed it to RoZita, and all sipped the wine, even Ahmed, who was relinquishing his own religion for hers. "It is the same God, after all," he'd said as he underwent the baptism ceremony by the waterfall. "And he destined me for this path and instructed me to follow my vision, which led me to you. It is only fitting that I embrace it all."

As Alejandro slid the golden ring on Elena's finger she noticed that his hands were slightly trembling. She smiled because her strong hero was so thrilled like herself. And as they looked deep in each other's eyes, she noticed another movement for the first time. It was inside her belly...Her face lit even brighter as Alejandro whispered: "I love you!" And they kissed, not passionately of course in front of the whole congregation, but the tips of their tongues met with incredible tenderness. Elena took his hand, and while he laid his other arm around her waist to cover where his other hand would lie, she pressed his hand to her belly.

They both forgot the others around them because there was it again ...the movement against his hand. He smiled ecstatically and Elena whispered in his ear: "Our little son is happy too!" And they kissed again...

As both grooms pushed away the veils and kissed the brides, the congregation broke into cheers, then began singing "_Hosanna in excelsis, benedictus_..." Then they lifted the couples on to their shoulders and actually carried them out of the church, where everyone began to dance, laughing, singing, some of them shrieking.

RoZita/Christina's parents embraced her for the thousandth time, and they embraced Ahmed also. Dora whispered to RoZita, "Does he by any chance have a triplet?" then giggled.

"No telling how many of him are out there," RoZita laughed and hugged her. "But beware. Some of them could be dangerous."

There was feasting and more dancing and games. There was a puppet show for the children, in which Zorro felled a few adversaries and rescued a few maidens, and there was even a scene where he and his twin dispatched the dreaded pirate Scourge, with a splendidly arrayed Fezeek in the background. "Now for your just desserts-flaming rum punch!" shouted the Alejandro/Zorro puppet gleefully. RoZ held her breath until the pirate went down and then up came another puppet with streamers of orange crepe paper glued to him, shaking them all about, and she sighed with relief. She knew better than to question the good taste of this part. It was what The People wanted, and clearly they were relishing it even though the child who was working the Scourge puppet had a rather squeaky voice and didn't sound very menacing. Although he certainly shrieked convincingly as he went up in "flames".

RoZita sneaked a look at Alejandro, who had a tight-lipped little smile, and Elena was not smiling at all. They both looked glad when it was over. And as RoZita looked at Alejandro she suddenly had a funny feeling, and a cloud passed over her joy. Somehow her mind latched onto him, and she didn't want to let him out of her sight. When he went off to get Elena something to eat she felt an incredible sense of loss. She didn't know how to account for it. She remembered what Ahmed told her after they brought Alejandro home from the hospital following his operation.

"He did it for me," he said in pained wonder as he came downstairs from Alejandro's bedroom and Elena went up to him. "At first he would not take the drug when I offered it, he said to dull the pain would take away the significance of the ritual. But afterwards, when I offered it again, he took it, and soon the medication loosened his tongue. He said, 'Now you will no longer feel like a foreigner. Because I am like you, and the people will treat us equally.' RoZita, he did it for me, and it was not even necessary! I do not know what to think, I am overwhelmed. I do not feel at all worthy of that kind of love."

"Of course you are worthy," she reassured him, but she was almost as overwhelmed as he.

She thought of what he said now as Ahmed went off also to get her a plate from the long, long table of food. Elena came to stand beside her. They both looked at their grooms without speaking for a long moment.

Then, finally, RoZita said, "It's a strange thing, but, you know..."

"Yes?" Elena looked as though she knew what RoZ was going to say before she said it.

"I think...you may hate me for what I'm going to say, but..."

"I seriously doubt that," Elena smiled. "But for you, Alejandro would not be alive now." Her voice quivered a little. "What is it, _hermanita_?"

RoZita swallowed before answering, looking out at the two men. "I think...that I am a little in love...with both of them. Is that totally weird, or what?"

Elena didn't look at all shocked or even surprised. In fact, she nodded, laying her newly ringed hands on the slight swell of the new little life inside of her as she looked toward the bridegrooms standing together, talking and joking with their sides to the women. Her eyes were both dreamy and wistful as she looked first at the red cummerbund, then the blue, the two perfect profiles. And she put an arm around her new sister and embraced her tightly.

"I know exactly what you mean," she sighed.

~The End~


End file.
